


My Heart Forgets to Beat

by Linsky



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Still Hockey Players, Boys Are Oblivious, Cuddling, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Kissing Lessons, M/M, Pining, Plausible Deniability, Virgin!Jonny, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-12 19:47:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7119976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Patrick,” Jonny cuts in. He’s breathing too hard. “You’re not supposed to touch me because I hurt people. My touch. It <i>hurts people.”</i></p>
<p>“Well, you didn’t hurt me,” Patrick says, flopping onto the bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to [Tirsh](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tirsh) for betaing and for assuring me that, yes, it is okay to have a premise that requires major suspension of disbelief. And also for saving me from using lyrics from Like a Virgin as a title.
> 
> Sometimes I [tumble](http://linskywords.tumblr.com/)!

Jonny’s not expecting to make friends on the Blackhawks.

It's not that he thinks they’ll be jerks or anything—it’s just that he’s almost never had friends. When he was little, it was partly because he was homeschooled, but—well. It’s just always been hard, is all. He knows how lucky he got with T.J. in college, and he doesn’t expect anything like that again.

He’s definitely not surprised by the weird looks he gets when he walks into the locker room at prospect camp. He can usually tell when people have heard about him, and these guys have clearly heard about him. And not just the part where he was drafted third overall. These are the sideways looks, the edging away, the whispers that mean they’ve heard the full story.

It’s a good thing. It means they give him plenty of space as he finds one of the assistant coaches and gets directions to the room they’ve set aside for him. It means he won’t hurt anyone.

Once he’s changing in his private room, it’s better. He’s still alone, but at least he doesn’t have to see them looking away from him. And once he has his pads on, it won’t matter. He’ll be one of them, if only for a couple of hours, as long as they’re playing. He’ll be normal.

***

It’s the reason Jonny’s parents got him into hockey in the first place: two-inch-thick pads aren’t perfect, but they’re about the best protection you can hope for with a four-year-old who doesn’t understand why he’s not allowed to touch people.

Jonny loved it as soon as he set his tiny baby feet on the ice. Even when he was just starting out and could barely hobble across the rink, it was his favorite thing to do. Everything else involved people yelling at him to be careful, veering away from him, a leash strapped around his wrist. On the ice, he was free.

Then, as he got older, it became something more: something he cared about for its own sake, and something all-consuming that let him forget about everything else in his life. When he was on a team, he was part of a crowd; people were so distant from him the rest of the time, but on the ice he got to stand in the middle of group and feel people’s body heat and smell their sweat and hear their heavy breathing. Maybe it should have been gross or overwhelming, but Jonny soaked it up.

And he was _good._

Good enough to get drafted. It was only sort of a surprise: all the scouting reports were talking about him, about the power of his skating and his leadership on the ice. UND had demonstrated that he could play at a serious level, but there was always a “but,” a little hesitation when people were talking about him. Reasons why no one in the NHL might want to take the chance.

He remembers it so vividly: going into the auditorium for the draft, sitting in his little cordoned off section with a one-seat gap between him and his parents. Wondering if he was going to keep sitting there until it was over and the crowd all filed out and someone came to escort him out, someone who would be somber-eyed and apologetic because no one in the NHL was crazy enough to take a risk on someone like him.

And then his name. People on the stage who held off from shaking his hand just in time. A Blackhawks jersey sliding over his head, and the lights of the cameras even brighter than the smile he could feel stretching his face. _Third._

After that, he couldn’t possibly care about a little thing like whether he ended up with any friends. Not with a chance like that.

***

The first day of prospect camp goes pretty well. It’s Jonny’s second time around—another year at UND made sense, everyone agreed—and he recognizes some of the faces from the last go-round. He doesn’t talk to any of them, though; just focuses on playing.

He’s one of the best ones here. That was true last time, too. Jonny doesn’t kid himself: he knows that if he played like some of these guys do, even some of the better ones, he’d never have been drafted in the first place. He’d be sitting at home, getting a college degree online and looking for a job that would never require him to go into crowded areas. He’s only here because hockey was all he did for so many years: because of the endless hours he spent on the rink as a kid, practicing skating and shooting and puck handling until his hands and feet were numb. Most kids had lives, had school, had friends. Jonny never had anything but the ice.

It’s working for him now. And if it makes people shoot him envious looks now and then—well, they were going to be looking at him anyway. Jonny would rather it be for his skill.

He hears the other guys talking, while they’re between drills or sitting on the bench. They must think he can’t hear them, or maybe they just don’t care. It’s the same kind of words over and over: “freak” and “weirdo” and “dangerous.” Words that make his shoulders go tight and his jaw clench.

He knows by now to keep quiet when he hears those words. They used to get to him more, when he was a kid—he’d have to dig his nails into his palms and try to hide the tears that trickled down his face. But now he knows what to expect. 

None of the prospects says anything to his face—until the third day.

They’re on the bench while some of the guys are running power play drills on the ice. Jonny usually sits apart from the others, just to be safe, but he has to refill his water bottle from the cooler at the other end. He’s shuffling back past everyone—carefully; the pads are good protection, but they don’t cover absolutely everywhere, and four layers of cloth just aren’t as good—when someone says, “Ow!”

Jonny freezes. The guy in front of him is glaring at him, hand slapped on his neck. Courier, his name is.

“Jesus,” Courier says to Jonny. “Did…did you touch me? I think you touched me.”

There’s an immediate uptick in tension in all the guys around them. Jonny presses himself against the boards behind him. “No,” he says.

“You did. You touched me,” Courier says a little louder.

“I didn’t,” Jonny tries to say. But the other guys are speaking up now—he hears lots of “Jesus,” and “Fucker,” and “Did he really?”

“I think you’re trying to take out the competition,” Courier says.

Now Jonny’s cheeks flush with anger. He bites down on what he wants to say—that Courier’s not the competition; he’s barely even good enough to be here. It’s true, but not helpful. “I didn’t,” he says again, trying to keep his voice level. He’s the one who’ll suffer if this gets to be a thing. “I didn’t even take my gloves off.”

“Maybe they slipped,” Courier says.

“Maybe you hurt him through your gloves.” The guy next to Courier is looking at him with small hateful eyes. “I heard you can do that.”

“No, I—not through gloves,” Jonny says. “And—look, I have two pairs on.” He pulls off his outer glove to show them the thin ultra-strong gloves he has on underneath. “I didn’t get anywhere near you, I swear.”

Courier glares at him for another moment. “Well, whatever. I’m going to go get myself checked out by medical,” he says, swinging his legs over the back of the bench. “They can take it up with you if they find anything.”

He stomps off, waddling on his skates, and the guy who was sitting next to him gives Jonny a glare and heads to the other end of the bench. A few other guys slide away, as if Jonny’s contagious.

Jonny takes a seat and trains his eyes on the ice. He feels his cheeks burn. Every time. He thinks he’s used to it, and then—

“Asshole,” he hears from the other side of him, and flinches.

It’s Patrick Kane. Jonny’s known who he is for a while, of course: number one draft pick, flashing the puck around like it’s magnetized to his stick. They’ve skated together a little bit over the past couple days, and Jonny thinks maybe they have something—maybe real chemistry, the kind you only stumble upon if you’re really, really lucky. If there’s anyone Jonny doesn’t want thinking badly of him, it’s Patrick Kane.

“Look,” he says, going rigid, “just because he said I touched him, that doesn’t mean I—”

“No.” Kane gives Jonny a weird look. “Courier, obviously. You’re like ten times better than him. Why would you even need to take him out?”

“Oh.” Jonny forces his muscles to unclench. He wasn’t expecting—well. This part doesn’t usually happen, is all. “You’re right. He is an asshole.”

Kane laughs and slides a little closer on the bench. It’s not very close—there are still a good eight inches between them—but it’s closer than anyone has dared to get so far. “That was some nice shooting today,” he says.

“Yeah?” Jonny says. He’s still a little on edge, waiting for the catch in the conversation.

“I mean, not as good as mine, but.” Kane shrugs a shoulder, as if to say, _What can you do?_

“You—little shit,” Jonny says, and Kane laughs again and smacks Jonny on the back of the helmet.

“You’re all right, Toews,” Kane says, like it’s a pronouncement, and Jonny can’t help the rush of warmth in the center of his chest.

***

He was three when they first figured it out. His parents thought it was static electricity at first. They usually laugh when they tell the story—like it’s funny, what Jonny does, how they figured it out. He was always skidding across the carpets of their house, they say, and they thought they were just getting really bad shocks when he touched them. It was annoying, at first.

Then Jonny’s mom started feeling achy all the time. Started having a hard time doing fine motor things, like writing or putting on her makeup. Then there came a day when she couldn’t use her hand at all, like all the nerves had seized up. It went away after a few hours, and she went to the doctor as soon as she could drive, bringing the boys with her. When they got there, she wasn’t the one who got a follow-up visit with a nerve specialist; it was Jonny.

Jonny doesn’t remember it. He’s been in to see doctors so many times since then, all sorts of fancy specialists who were supposed to be able to figure out him out, and they all blend together. But that was the first time anyone told him that there was something wrong with him.

It’s funny, now, the idea that there could have been a time when he didn’t know. When there was nothing distinguishing him from everyone else. Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t been too young to appreciate it while it lasted—but then, he supposes that’s what being normal is all about. Not having to think about how you’re the same as everyone else. Not having to be careful when you walk past your brother in the hallway because you might send him into a screaming seizure.

No one has ever been able to explain what happens when he touches people—not the specialists, not the internet when Jonny was old enough to look himself up. The doctor who first saw him named it after himself and published a paper about it. Since then, Jonny’s sometimes gotten calls from doctors and other scientists who want to study him or cure him or both. But nothing’s ever made a difference. When he touches people, he hurts them. It’s as simple as that.

The motor control in his mom’s hand came back after a few hours, that first time, but there was a numb patch at the base of her palm that never went away. She’s been careful not to touch him ever since.

***

Jonny’s relieved to see that none of Courier’s crowd end up at training camp. He feels selfish for it, but it’s gut-level relief, and he can’t help it.

Not that training camp isn’t without its own awkwardness. There’s a whole new group of people to stare at him, veterans this time, and that means they’re less obvious about staring but Jonny feels more intimidated when they do.

His mom calls him the night before, while he’s settling into his hotel room. He wanted to get an apartment right away—it’s so much easier when he can be sure there won’t be anyone else in his space—but his parents argued for holding off until he knew for sure he’d be on the team. It made sense. But it means he’s stuck in a hotel.

Jonny just said goodbye to his mom a few hours ago at the airport, but she spends a while asking him questions about his trip, about what the team has lined up for tomorrow. Then she hesitates in a way he knows means she has something to say.

“There’s an article in the Chicago Tribune,” she says finally. “It just went up online.”

Jonny tilts his head back against the headboard. Of fucking course there is.

“It’s nothing new,” she says, by which she presumably means it’s the same shit that got published about him through his UND years.

“So, let me guess. ‘Are the Blackhawks making a mistake?’” he says.

“They’re not,” his mom says quietly. “Sweetie, you know they’re not.”

“Do I?” he asks.

“You’d better,” she says. “Because they’re the lucky ones, getting you on the roster—”

“Thanks, Mom.” He squeezes his eyes shut against the praise that’s even harder to take than the criticism, sometimes. “I should probably go to bed. Early day tomorrow.”

***

He doesn’t read the article. He thinks about it a little as he drives his rental car to the rink the next day, though. He doesn’t know if the other guys will have seen it, but it doesn’t really matter: it’s just one article out of dozens, and there’s no way they don’t know the story about him by now. It’s just one more thing. It doesn’t change anything.

He goes straight to his private changing room when he gets there. If he changes fast, he can be out on the ice before he has to see anyone—but there’s a knock on the door before he’s done.

It’s Savvy. “Toews,” he says, and Jonny’s stomach goes tight. He didn’t even get to the first morning of training camp. He didn’t even get to see what he can do alongside the other guys. He’s not ready to—

“Just want to let you know how happy we are to have you here,” Savvy says.

Jonny lets out a breath. “Thank you, sir.”

Savvy nods. “You’re going to do us proud out there.”

Jonny’s getting off easy. He knows it; they could still have doubts, will definitely still be watching him during camp to make sure nothing disastrous happens. But if Savvy’s here in person, reassuring him, that means something.

He starts to turn away to finish changing. Then Savvy says, “Oh, and Dr. Fletcher wants to see you before things start.”

Jonny fumbles his glove. He forces a grin. “Of course, sir.”

***

Jonny hates doctors.

They always get this gleam in their eyes, like he’s somehow fixable. Like if they just do enough tests they can figure out what’s underlying his weirdness and solve it. They never seem content with Jonny’s explanation that no, there is no explanation. And definitely no solution.

He managed to get out of his physical at prospect camp with a note from his university doctor, but he has a feeling that’s not going to cut it this time.

“Look,” Jonny says as he steps into Dr. Fletcher’s office. He’s put his gear on already, because that makes everything easier. “You’re not going to be able to touch me, and no, it’s not something you’re going to be able to cure. So, you know, height and weight or whatever, but—”

“Actually,” Dr. Fletcher interrupts, “I was hoping you would touch _me.”_

Jonny looks at him for a moment, then lets out his breath. One of those. He doesn’t meet them that often anymore. “It really is real,” he says. “I know it sounds crazy—”

“No, I know.” Dr. Fletcher leans against the edge of his desk. He’s lanky, hair thinning, maybe in his early forties. “I believe you. But I’m going to be treating all of you boys, and I know you’re going to be careful, but we both know accidents can happen.”

“The thing, this summer, it wasn’t—” Jonny starts to say, but the doctor holds up a hand to cut him off.

“I’m not saying that anything’s necessarily happened already,” he says. “But I want to know what we’re dealing with, if anything else comes up.” He holds out a hand.

Jonny looks at it. “That isn’t a good idea.”

Dr. Fletcher cocks an eyebrow at him. “Can you honestly tell me no accidents have happened in the last five years?”

Jonny is silent. Smithy’s face, purple against the green of the carpet.

The doctor nods. “Right. So I need to know what we’re dealing with.” He offers his hand to Jonny again.

“I’ve caused nerve damage before,” Jonny says.

“I know.”

“They don’t know how long it takes to happen,” Jonny says. “They tried to do experiments, once, but it—didn’t go well.”

The doctor nods slowly. “So let’s stick to a quick touch.”

Jonny looks at the doctor’s bare hand, held before him. It’s pale, laced with veins, covered in sparse hair. Well—it’s his funeral.

He peels off one of his gloves. Maybe if it’s just for a split second. A hot-stove touch. Maybe—

“Oh holy _God,”_ Dr. Fletcher says, jerking back from his touch instantly. He takes a minute to breathe through his teeth, hunched over, his other hand wrapping around his wrist. “Wow, you were not kidding.”

Jonny pulls his hand back against his chest. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“No, no, I asked for it.” The doctor raises his hand, moves the fingers around, rubs the spot Jonny touched. Like he’s taking inventory of an injury. “The pain is almost gone. Does it usually fade that fast?”

“Yes, sir,” Jonny says. He still seems to be having trouble getting his voice up to a normal volume. No matter how many times it happens accidentally— “If I pull away fast. The longer I do it, the longer the effects last.”

“And the more severe it gets?” the doctor asks, and Jonny nods. “Well, that’s good to know. I’ll keep that in mind in case anything happens.”

“It won’t,” Jonny says quickly. “I mean…I’ll make sure it won’t.” He can’t really promise that, not when other people are out of his control, but he’ll try. He always tries.

The doctor nods. “We can all hope not.”

***

No one looks at him weirdly when he comes onto the ice a little late. He’s still shaken by what happened in the doctor’s office ( _he asked for it; he asked for it_ ), so he gives the other guys a wide berth, but they glance at him, and some of them give him a nod. Patrick Kane grins at him from halfway down the line and spins his mouthguard around.

And then they’re playing, and it’s good; it’s normal.

It’s not until early in the afternoon that Jonny realizes he’s not being checked as much as he might expect to be. That was true at prospect camp, too, but he chalked it up to the players not being as good. These are seasoned NHL vets. If they’re not checking him, it’s not because they can’t.

It takes him a few hours to work up the nerve to say something. He waits until they’re all on the ice after a short scrimmage (Jonny’s team won, but maybe only because no one wanted to stop him when he was taking the puck to the net, and that is not okay). They’re standing in a loose clump, plenty of space around Jonny, and he says, “You guys know you can hit me, right?”

It’s silent after he speaks up. There’s some awkward shifting of glances. Then Brent Seabrook says, “Can we?”

_“Yes,”_ Jonny says. “I mean, it’s—the pads. They’re thick enough. It’ll be fine.”

Everyone still looks really uncomfortable. Jonny wonders how he can prove it to them—is it cool if he asks one of them to tackle him? But before he can do anything, Patrick Kane—Kaner—says, “Well, all right, then,” and launches himself at Jonny.

Jonny’s so surprised he doesn’t even brace himself. Kaner slams into his chest and topples them both, landing on Jonny and knocking the wind out of him. Jonny looks up with startled eyes as Kaner whoops, pumping his fist in the air, and everyone cheers around them.

“I think that’s the first hit Kaner’s landed all day,” Sharpy says, and Kaner sticks his tongue out at him.

“You guys are just jealous that I took down Tazer with my sick moves, here,” he says, thumping Jonny on the chest for emphasis, and Jonny has to grin, too, because of all Kaner’s moves, checking is probably the least likely to be described as “sick.” And—and because Kaner’s basically lying on top of him, and he isn’t afraid.

“Only counts if you can do it a second time,” Jonny says, and Kaner snorts and drops the hand he was using to haul Jonny to his feet so that Jonny teeters and lands on his ass.

“Oh, so not funny,” Jonny says, while everyone howls with laughter. Kaner’s practically crying with it—but it doesn’t feel mean, not like some of the times Jonny’s been laughed at over the years. It feels like he’s in on the joke. And he thinks—yeah, okay, he can do this.

***

It’s not lost on him, in those first few days, how much of how comfortable he feels at camp is due to Kaner.

On the ice, definitely. Jonny’s played with people who were good with him before, but nothing like this. He and Kaner have totally different styles, but they seem to be able to read each other perfectly. It’s like the two of them move at a different speed from everyone else. The puck flies fast from one of their sticks to the other, the opposing defense seems clumsy and slow, and when they score a goal together, it slices in easy and sweet as anything.

“Fucking awesome, man,” Kaner says when he gloms onto Jonny afterward. His arms are tight around Jonny, and Jonny has a moment of insanity where he thinks, this—this is what he scored the goal for. This feeling here.

It’s stupid, of course. He doesn’t need a reason to score goals in hockey. But this feeling…it makes it even better.

It’s not what he expected. Jonny thought he would go through a few months with the new team before anyone felt comfortable around him, before he felt like he had a place in the room. But there’s Kaner on the third day of training camp, waiting for Jonny with a smile and a cup of coffee, and when Duncs and Seabs come in a minute later they nod and say hi to both of them. Like having Kaner next to him makes Jonny somehow normal.

It probably helps that Kaner is friends with everybody. Jonny sees it in the locker room—he tries to get to the rink early enough so that he can change into his pads and spend a few minutes hanging out in the room while the other guys are changing. He both loves it and hates it, being in the room: loves that he gets to pretend to be a normal part of things, hates that he can’t really belong here.

Kaner, though. Kaner doesn’t need to try to belong; he just does, like the Blackhawks’ locker room is where he’s been meant to be his whole life. He bounces around and makes effortless jokes with these veterans he’s known for about half a second. On the morning of the fourth day he jumps on Sharpy’s back, and Sharpy grouses and tries to buck him off while Burish helps by trying to lift him off by the hair. “Not the curls!” Kaner yells, and that sets off a round of laughter and the other guys all doing their best to dislodge him, while Kaner clings for dear life and Sharpy rolls his eyes in a way that can only be fondness, towards this eighteen-year-old kid he barely knows.

It’s a level of comfort with people Jonny’s never had. Could never have, even in a full set of pads. Usually he’s okay with that. But Kaner finally gives up his hold and surrenders to Burish’s headlock, and Sharpy tickles him, and Jonny watches and wishes.

***

Somehow he makes it through training camp. It’s not really a surprise, but it sort of is, when they tell him at the end of it that they’d like him and Kaner to do some interviews together. Show the world that the Hawks are getting new blood.

Jonny doesn’t know why they’d choose him for that. He doesn’t say it, just agrees when they ask him, but he can feel it around the edges of every question he gets asked. Are the Hawks serious, with him? Do they really think he can safely play professional hockey?

_I played for two years at UND,_ he wants to shout at them. _Obviously I can do it._ But they never ask him outright, and so he never gets to say it.

Kaner turns to him before they go onstage for their first TV interview. His skin is sort of pinkish from whatever they put on it for the lights. “Am I the only one who feels like this is a weird thing to be doing?” he asks.

“Oh _God_ no,” Jonny says in relief, and Kaner laughs, like just hearing that made him feel better.

It’s nice to have someone with him through all the weirdness. There are so many times when Jonny can’t do whatever the team is doing—can’t go out with them at night or go grab lunch or even walk through crowded buildings alongside them—but when they’re doing all this media stuff, it’s him and Kaner against the world, and that carries over to time with the team. Jonny can’t quite feel excluded when he meets up with them again and Kaner heads straight towards him, complaining about the food or saying something about their recent game that is just so wrong that Jonny needs to argue with him for a good quarter hour until the rest of the guys are rolling their eyes around them.

It’s kind of great.

It’s so much better than anything Jonny’s had before—even in college, where T.J. became his friend eventually, but everyone was uneasy around him for months. Now, it’s only the first few days of the season, but Seabs will come up and chat with him when he’s sitting alone, and Sharpy will shout sarcastic remarks at him from the other end of the table at team dinners, and he and Kaner are fucking lighting it up on the ice.

It’s enough that Jonny tries not to mind when he does wind up alone. Like on the road: obviously he’s going to room alone on the road. He’s never had a road roommate—not in college, not on any of his teams before. He used to overhear the complaints about it when there weren’t enough rooms and three guys would be put in together, but he knew they were still happier than they would be if one of them had been with him. No one wanted any of the players to get hurt, maybe badly, maybe badly enough that they couldn’t play.

So he’s pretty surprised when he’s in his hotel room after their third preseason game and Kaner comes through the door.

Jonny’s on one of the beds, texting with his parents, and he jerks up in surprise. No one else ever has a key to his room. But it’s Kaner, carrying a duffle.

He drops it on the floor by the door. “How attached are you to that bed?” he asks.

“Huh?” Jonny looks around the room, like maybe there’s an explanation somewhere he’s missing.

“That bed,” Kaner repeats. “Do you want it? Because I hate sleeping in the one near the door.”

“You can’t have my bed, Kaner,” Jonny says automatically.

“Fine, but don’t think I’ll let you take it next time,” Kaner says.

“Next…what are you doing here?” Jonny asks.

“Um, putting my stuff on the bed?”

“No, I mean…” Jonny starts to say, but Kaner quirks him a grin.

“Hope you’re less attached to solitude than you were to that bed,” he says. “Mind if I have first shower?”

“Go ahead,” Jonny says faintly. Kaner salutes and goes into the bathroom, and Jonny—well, no, Jonny’s pretty sure he doesn’t mind.

***

He expects some sort of conversation about it. Maybe Kaner sitting him down, telling him the rules for living together, or at least complaining about how they put them together, suddenly, with no warning. Even if he’s too polite to complain about it to Jonny’s face, Jonny figures he’ll be complaining about it behind his back. And since when is Kaner too polite about anything, anyway?

“Of course he’s not complaining,” Sharpy says with an eye-roll when Jonny ventures a cautious comment about it a couple of days later. “Dude asked for it.”

“He—what?” Jonny says.

“Yeah, he talked to Savvy,” Sharpy says. “Something about rookie bonding?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Hey, don’t ask me to explain his weirdness,” Sharpy says with a shrug, and Jonny can’t get anything else out of him.

He tries to talk to Kaner about it at practice the next day. Kaner just scoffs and whacks Jonny on the stomach with his stick. “Like anyone would want to room with you,” he says. “What do I look like, an idiot?”

“Kaner. I’m serious.” Jonny tries to fix him in place with the power of his glare alone. “You can’t just—I know you think there’s nothing to worry about, but you could really get—”

“What’s that, Seabs? We should crush Tazer in this passing drill? What a great idea!” Kaner says, and races off down the ice.

So that clears up exactly nothing. Jonny can’t tell if Kaner did ask to room with him and is just being a pain in the ass about it, or if he didn’t and he’s being a pain in the ass anyway because that’s what he does. Every time he tries to bring up the part where, oh, Kaner might suffer accidental pain and major injury, Kaner changes the subject.

Kaner’s good at changing the subject. Jonny learns more about him in the first few weeks of rooming with him on the road than he thinks he’s ever known about anyone in his life: about Kaner’s sisters and parents and grandfather and the dumb YA romance novels he reads with his sisters and how as soon as Kaner has enough money, he’s going to buy a house in Buffalo so he can have a home near them. Pretty soon Jonny forgets there was anything he was supposed to talk to him about and just enjoys the talking. He’s never shared much about himself with anyone, but he ends up talking, too—not about the stuff that’s hard to get into, just the easy stuff, about his brother and his parents and the rink his dad makes every year in the backyard.

And of course there’s always hockey to talk about. They spend hours dissecting plays and players and opposing teams’ styles and figuring out the million small ways they can be better. And sometimes they stay up late into the night when they should be sleeping and talk about nothing much at all.

“Jonny,” Kaner says one night in St. Louis. He’s hanging off the end of the bed, head upside-down, as Jonny comes out of the shower. They were definitely supposed to be asleep an hour ago, but Jonny lost track of time. “Jooooonny.”

“Yes, _Patrick,”_ Jonny says, going to stand over him.

Kaner looks up at him for a moment, something flickering in his eyes, and Jonny can’t tell if this is going towards a joke or something serious. Then Kaner says, in a low voice, “We’re going to play some really awesome hockey together, aren’t we?”

And Jonny—he thought that went without saying. Somehow, though, hearing Kaner say it makes his throat go all funny. “Yeah. ’Course we are.”

Kaner’s smile is unexpectedly beautiful upside-down. Jonny thinks, _Patrick,_ rolls the name around in his mind. He likes the sound of it.


	2. Chapter 2

A few things change in Jonny’s life, with Patrick as his roommate.

“Come on, Jonny, come oooon,” Patrick says after a game against Dallas. “Everyone’s going out. It won’t be the same without you.” He bats his eyelashes, as if that’s ever made him look anything other than ridiculous.

“You know I can’t,” Jonny says.

Patrick opens his mouth to object, like that will do any good, but Sharpy speaks first. “You know, I bet you could,” he says. “What if we get a booth and put you on the inside corner, with a bag next to you or something so no one would get too close? We can even put Peekaboo here across from you, so no one with long legs would bump into your knees.”

Patrick squawks a protest, but Jonny’s already shaking his head. “What about the way in and out?” A couple of layers of clothing aren’t enough; Jonny’s only really safe in a crowd in a very thick coat and gloves and a toque—or in his hockey pads, with a couple of layers of Under Armour—and he doesn’t think he can go into a bar that way.

Sharpy waves a hand as if he can brush off the limitations that have shaped Jonny’s life for a decade and a half. “We’re hockey players,” he says. “We can block.”

“Pretty sure that’s American football,” Jonny says, but it’s too late: Sharpy’s calling in a reservation and making sure everyone has the address and herding people towards their cars. Patrick looks at Jonny expectantly, and Jonny—well, Jonny goes after him.

He guesses he’s doing this, then.

***

It’s embarrassing, but Jonny’s never actually been to a bar.

He’s seen them on TV and in movies, of course. He hasn’t been living under a rock. And he’s been to restaurants before, a handful of times, with his family. He knows how to tip and how to read a menu and how to order food. But bars are different.

It’s louder than he’d expected. Loud places usually involve crowds, so Jonny hasn’t spent a lot of time them. His main exposure to volume has been at hockey rinks. This is just about as loud, but more chaotic. There are people everywhere, patrons standing in tight little knots and wait staff rushing around with people’s drink orders, and Jonny stands in the doorway and feels the fresh sweat of panic break out on his neck and in the small of his back.

There’s no way he can step in there without hurting someone.

Sharpy’s already giving directions to his blockers, though. Him and Seabs in front of Jonny, Duncs behind with Buff, because Laddy got offended at being whistled for like a dog and Patrick was ruled out for being too small.

“They could reach right over you,” Duncs says, putting a hand on top of Patrick’s head while Patrick tries to knee him in the groin.

“Children!” Sharpy says—because he’s, what, in his mid-twenties? “We have a mission here, if you don’t mind.”

Jonny thinks he might mind. He thinks he might mind a lot. But they’re already walking into the restaurant, and if he stops he’s going to be crashed into by Duncs and Buff, and oh God he’s going to pass out.

He doesn’t, though. They make it to the booth, somehow with the space around Jonny intact, and Buff and Seabs step aside to let Jonny slide into the booth first.

“Ha!” Sharpy says. “Tell that to anyone who says we can’t execute plays.”

Jonny gives him a deadpan look. “Our powerplay today was oh for six.”

“Details,” Sharpy says, and ushers the others into their seats.

They overflow the booth and the one next to it. But no one’s touching Jonny, and after a few minutes, he lets himself relax. A little.

Patrick must notice, because when Jonny looks over at him, he’s beaming at him. “Not such a bad idea, huh?”

“Maybe not,” Jonny says grudgingly.

It’s a good night. They all order food and have heated conversations in loud voices, and for once Jonny can actually participate without feeling like he’s too far away or two beats behind.

People are drinking, and they get tipsier as the evening goes on. Not Jonny, though. He tried drinking once, with T.J. in a room where he wasn’t going to touch anyone, but all it did was bring to the surface things he doesn’t like to think about. Maybe it would be different if he could drink at a party or bar, but that wouldn’t be safe for him. Wouldn’t be safe for others.

They only have an optional skate the next day, though, so the rest of the team gets pretty drunk. They aren’t so far gone they’re encroaching on Jonny’s space, but enough that their conversation gets a little ridiculous. Enough that the single guys are up at the bar, trying to pick up girls.

Jonny doesn’t watch them. He purposefully engages Khabi in a discussion about shot percentages to keep his attention away from the bar. But that doesn’t help him twenty minutes later when Sharpy comes back to their table with a girl in tow.

“Hey guys, this is Lila,” he says.

Jonny frowns at him. He knows the girl isn’t for Sharpy, and it sure isn’t for Khabi, which means…Sharpy brought this girl over for him?

Sure enough, the girl is looking at him as she waves to the table, slightly awkwardly. “Hi,” she says.

Jonny waves back. He tries to smile but doesn’t think he’s doing a very good job of it. He’s just not sure what’s going on right now. Does Sharpy actually think it’s a good idea to find him a girl?

“Well, I’ll leave you kids to it,” Sharpy says, shark-like grin in place, and he vanishes into the crowd.

Lila slides into the booth. There’s still a bag between her and Jonny, but Jonny inches closer to the wall instinctively.

“So, you guys play hockey?” she says.

“Yeah, he’s pretty good.” Khabi jerks his thumb at Jonny and gets up. “Grabbing another beer, you want?”

“No thanks,” Jonny says, giving him dagger-eyes for abandoning him here.

Lila smiles at him. Jonny tries to look like he’s not freaking out.

This girl probably doesn’t know anything about him. His touching thing isn’t a secret in the hockey world—anyone who’s a fan of the Blackhawks would have heard about it by now. But if this girl isn’t a fan, she probably doesn’t know.

Jonny’s had to tell lots of people about it over the years. But never a girl in a bar. Never someone who might think—who might expect—

“Um,” he says to Lila. “So, do you watch?”

She shrugs. “My brother used to play when we were little, so I went to some of his games. Not much lately, though.”

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Damn it, Jonny talks to other human beings all day. He should not be this nervous just because she might reach over and touch him.

He looks around nervously, but Sharpy and Khabi are gone, and the only other person he can see is Patrick, at the bar, gesturing wildly while he talks to some girl.

Maybe he should just tell her. But it’s such a weird thing to say to people, and she probably won’t believe him—why would he have come to a crowded bar, if he can’t touch people? He’s had people not believe him before, and nine times out of ten they’re the ones who touch him to call his bluff. They’re also usually the ones who get maddest about getting hurt, afterward, like he deliberately tricked them by telling the truth.

The silence has been going on for a little too long, and Lila’s smile is starting to look strained. Jonny can practically feel his mother glaring at him for making this poor girl uncomfortable.

“Um,” he says again. “Are you, uh…are you in college?”

“Yeah,” Lila says, sounding relieved to have something to say. “I’m a sophomore at—”

“Hey, Tazer, who’s your friend?” Seabs asks, and Jonny practically melts with relief.

“Seabs. This is Lila,” he says. “Lila, this is, uh, Brent.”

“Hey, Lila.” Seabs smiles at her in a way Jonny hasn’t seen before, slow and full of charm. “Want to dance?”

Seabs has a girlfriend; Jonny has actually met her, at a team barbecue a couple of weeks ago, so he knows she exists, and he’s pretty sure Seabs isn’t the type of guy to pick up on the side. So this must be for Jonny.

_Thank you,_ Jonny mouths at Seabs, and Seabs winks at him as Lila goes off with him, looking a little guilty. Because apparently she’s the kind of girl who feels bad at walking away from awkward, fumbling guys who can’t string together more than three words in a row.

They go to the dance floor, and Jonny lets his forehead thunk against the table.

He shouldn’t be in a fucking bar. He can’t do any of the things you’re supposed to do here. He can’t drink, he can’t dance, he can’t flirt with girls. He should have just stayed home and spared everyone the awkwardness.

He startles when someone slides onto the bench next to him, but it’s only Patrick. “Sharpy get you, too?” Patrick asks.

Jonny instinctively glances around, but Sharpy isn’t there. “What do you mean?”

Patrick makes a gagging sound. “He just tried to hook me up with this girl who’s like ten years older than me. She asked if I was using a fake ID.”

“You _are_ using a fake ID,” Jonny says.

“Well, yeah.” Patrick smirks. “Gotta take advantage of our relative obscurity while it lasts.”

“Right,” Jonny says, though he’s not doing much to take advantage of it.

“So who’d he pick for you?” Patrick asks.

Jonny fiddles with his glass of water. “Just…some girl.”

“And?” Patrick looks at him like he’s waiting for the rest of the story.

“Um, she was fine,” Jonny says. The rest should be obvious, but Patrick still looks clueless, so he says, “I just can’t really, um, you know.”

“Oh. _Oh,”_ Patrick says. “Oh right, I guess that wouldn’t really work out for you.”

Jonny shakes his head.

“Wow.” Patrick gets a faraway look in his eyes. “Wow, man, that really sucks.”

“I guess,” Jonny says. He doesn’t like to think about it.

Patrick’s quiet for a minute, long enough that Jonny thinks he isn’t going to speak again. Then he says, “You must jerk off _all the time.”_

Jonny can’t help it. It’s not that it’s funny—it’s really, really not—but he can’t hold back. He bursts out laughing.

***

When Jonny first touched his dick, back when he was eleven, he thought he was going to paralyze himself.

He’d been told for the past eight years that his touch felt like an electric shock. Like static but stronger and more painful, and then the pain built and built until the nerves in the person he was touching went numb and unresponsive.

Jonny had to take people’s word for it, because he never felt anything like that when he touched his own skin. But his dick had been doing this weird thing where it got bigger and hard and—and kind of achy—and when he reached down to touch it one night, the brush of his fingers was like lightning crackling up and down his spine. It didn’t hurt, not like how people described, but Jonny pulled his hand back in terror.

He went around for a week thinking major parts of him were going to shrivel up and fall off if he accidentally touched them. It wasn’t until he overheard two of the other boys on his team talking about how it was better with lotion that he figured out that maybe—maybe it was normal.

After that, he touched himself a lot. The lightning-crackling feeling felt amazing, and when he did it for long enough it got better and better until he went rigid all over and his hand got wet and he felt all floaty and dreamy afterwards.

He didn’t think about it beyond that, really. He didn’t think much about dating, or about girls at all—he didn’t really know any, since he couldn’t go to school with the other kids. But the next year his sort-of-friend Andy from hockey got a girlfriend.

“I could get her to bring a friend if you want to come out with us,” he said to Jonny. “You know, since you don’t know anyone.”

“No, thanks,” Jonny said. “I can’t really do that kind of thing.”

He meant going to the movies, but Andy reacted like he’d meant something else. His eyes got huge, and he said, “Oh, right, I guess you wouldn’t be able to touch, huh?”

“Um, no,” Jonny said, though he was trying to figure out what Andy meant—Jonny couldn’t touch anyone; why would girls be any different?

He went home that day and asked his mom about it. He couldn’t bring himself to ask outright, but he said, halting, that one of his friends was talking about dating.

His mom got that look on her face that she did when he’d asked a couple of years ago if he could go to school like Dave. That look that meant she really didn’t want to tell him no, but she was going to do it anyway.

“It’s more stuff I can’t do, isn’t it?” he asked.

He could still have significant relationships, she told him. There were lots of ways to connect with people without touch. But he heard what she was really saying: that no, the other kids around him would probably start dating, but he wouldn’t be able to.

A year or two later, when she had the sex talk with him, it was the same thing: that this was something he should know about. But not something he’d ever be able to do, not with anyone else.

He didn’t really get it, at the time. There were so many things he couldn’t do, and it didn’t seem like a big deal to learn about another one. Even now—well, it’s not that bad. Sometimes he thinks he has it easier than a lot of other guys: the guys on his team in high school who complained about not being able to get a girlfriend; the ones who pined after someone who would never look twice at them; the ones who got girlfriends and then lost them and were miserable about it. Jonny’s known, since he was eleven, that he can never be with anyone like that. He knows that the only person he’ll ever have sex with is himself. No one’s going to dump him and ruin his plans for the life partnership he thought he was going to have. He’s known, from the start, that he never gets to have that, so he’s free to focus on the stuff that really matters.

That’s how he thinks about it sometimes. Other times, he wakes up in the small hours of the night and thinks that if he doesn’t have anyone to hold onto, he’ll die. Those are the times when he wraps his arms around himself and tries desperately to pretend it’s someone else, someone who wants to hold him, someone he could touch without hurting.

But then he falls back to sleep, and there’s hockey practice in the morning, and it’s fine. It’s always fine.

***

It’s great having Patrick as a roommate. But a couple months into the season, Jonny realizes he might be kind of an idiot.

Not on the ice, of course. He’s brilliant on the ice. The two of them are making great plays together, and the team as a whole isn’t quite where it should be yet, but Jonny sees the potential. They’ll get there eventually, if they keep working hard and upping their game, and Patrick is a huge part of that.

And it’s not like he’s stupid in other areas, either. Sure, he’s not—well, none of them are getting Ph.D.’s or anything—but Patrick has wit: he can banter and shoot down an argument in the blink of an eye, and his knowledge of hockey stats is frankly alarming.

And yet.

It happens in late November, near the start of the circus trip, when they’re in their hotel room in Detroit watching TV. A bunch of the guys have gone out before team dinner—Duncs said something about exploring an abandoned train station or something creepy like that—but Jonny’s exhausted all the time these days, from the games, from the practices, from the constant travel, and the thought of going out in a strange city and trying to avoid bumping into anyone makes him want to shrivel up inside his skin. So he’s in front of the TV instead, with Patrick in the next bed.

“Come ooon, Jonny, give me the remote. This is booooring,” Patrick says.

“It’s educational,” Jonny says, and keeps his eyes on the trout they’re slicing open on the screen.

“But it’s my birthday,” Patrick says.

“Your birthday was last week.” Jonny knows because Patrick made everyone on the team wear party hats on top of their helmets at morning skate. He’s still hoping that picture never ends up on the internet.

“Fine,” Patrick says, grumbly, and Jonny relaxes a little. Relaxes too much, maybe, because he doesn’t notice when Patrick sneaks up on him and slaps the remote out of his hand.

It’s not much of a touch: just a hard tap to the bottom of the hand holding the remote, there, quick, gone. The remote flies across the room, Patrick crows in victory, and Jonny jerks back so violently that he slams his elbow against the headboard.

“What the fuck,” Jonny rasps out.

“Yeah, that’s right, can’t keep this away from me,” Patrick says, picking up the remote as if exactly nothing is wrong, and—and he’s not screaming, or flinching, or wincing, or—

“What the _fuck,”_ Jonny repeats.

“Hm?” Patrick looks up, finally, and then his face crumples. “Oh— _oh,_ man, I’m so sorry, I forgot. Your touching thing, right?”

“My touching…what—what the fuck do you mean?” Jonny asks. His hands are fisted in the bedspread, and his pulse is pounding in his ears. “What just happened?”

“The thing where you don’t like to be touched.” Patrick takes a step back, raises his hands like he’s showing he’s not armed. “I’m so sorry, man. Won’t happen again.”

“No,” Jonny says. His voice sounds too loud to himself. “It’s not that I don’t like to be touched. It’s that…do you actually not know? Didn’t they tell you about this?”

“Yeah, they told us,” Patrick says. “Seabs said—I mean, I didn’t really want to ask you too much about it. But it’s obviously serious, so I get if you’re mad—”

“Patrick,” Jonny cuts in. He’s breathing too hard. “You’re not supposed to touch me because I hurt people. My touch. It _hurts people.”_

Patrick scrunches up his brow. “What? How would that even work?”

“I don’t know, it’s just—” Jonny stops, makes himself breathe deep. He has no idea what’s going on. “Did…you really not feel anything?”

Patrick shrugs. “I don’t know, it always stings a little when you hit someone, you know? But it probably hurt you more than me, so.”

Jonny stares at him. He’s never had anyone not know what they felt before. Even when he’s bumped into people on the street by accident, they’ve screamed. Outright screamed, and that was through several layers of clothing.

Patrick looks back at him and shrugs. “Maybe you’re broken?” he says.

“I have to go,” Jonny says, and stumbles out of the room.

***

Dr. Fletcher doesn’t always travel with them, but he did for this trip. Jonny texts Dale to ask which room he’s in—probably a stupid move, since he doesn’t want Dale to think he’s injured, but he doesn’t care right now.

He gets back a room number and an _Everything okay?_ He ignores the second text and goes to the room, where Dr. Fletcher opens the door and raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“I need to touch you,” Jonny says.

The eyebrows go higher. “I’m sorry?”

“I just…” Jonny runs a hand through his own hair. “There was…an incident. I need you to touch me and let me know what you feel.”

Dr. Fletcher steps back from the door. “Why don’t you come in?”

Jonny feels a little crazed as he steps inside the room. A little bit woozy and sick and like he’s walking too fast. Like he’s trying to get away from something.

“So.” Dr. Fletcher leans back against the bureau, crosses his arms. “You accidentally hurt someone?”

“No,” Jonny says, closing his eyes for an instant, and there’s the thing he’s trying to get away from: the furious, fluttering feeling that’s battering the inside of his ribcage. The feeling of hope. “Someone…didn’t get hurt.”

Dr. Fletcher is quiet for a minute. Jonny can feel the enormity of what he said, echoing in the air. Everything it might mean.

“And you want me to…”

“There’s no one else I can ask,” Jonny says. It’s not really true—well, it is, but it’s misleading, because it’s just that there’s no one else he _should_ ask. But he shouldn’t be asking Dr. Fletcher, either. It’s not a fair thing to ask of anyone. But Dr. Fletcher let him do it once before, and—

And the room is spinning a little, and he has to _know._

“All right,” Dr. Fletcher says, and he holds his hand out like it’s easy.

Jonny takes a deep breath. Then he shakes his head. “The other hand,” he says. “Sometimes if I touch more than once, the…” His voice fades out. “The nerves…”

Dr. Fletcher doesn’t ask him how he knows. He just switches hands. “This good?”

Jonny nods. He looks at Dr. Fletcher’s hand, and he thinks, for the first time in his life, that maybe…maybe it will be fine. Maybe he can do this. If this goes well—

He touches his fingertips to the doctor’s hand.

When the doctor shouts, it’s loud enough that the people in the rooms next door must hear it. Jonny flinches back as the doctor pulls his hand to his own chest, curling around it.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” Jonny asks.

“Yes, yes, sorry.” The doctor straightens up, shakes his hand out. “It, uh, took me by surprise. I thought I remembered what it felt like. It’s, ah, a defense mechanism, actually, our bodies forgetting how much something hurt. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“So it wasn’t—worse?” Jonny manages to ask. “Than before?”

“No, I don’t think so.” The doctor hesitates. “But…”

He doesn’t look like he wants to finish, and Jonny doesn’t need him to. “It’s okay.” Jonny backs up and reaches behind his back for the doorknob. “It’s okay. I’m just gonna…thanks,” he says, and gets out of there as fast as he can.

***

Nothing has changed.

That’s the thing he has to hold onto. This has been his reality for so long; it’s the same as it’s always been. But he still feels like his throat is closing up. Not like he’s going to cry, or fall apart, or anything, just that: his throat, closing up. It’s interesting, really. The way his muscles have gone tight, the way everything feels numb, the way his brain feels disconnected from his body.

Nothing has changed. He’s still the same. Nothing has changed.

He walks a little, gets to the end of the hallway, realizes he doesn’t know where he is, or where he’s going.

Team dinner. They have a team dinner down in one of the banquet rooms. Jonny can go to team dinner. Nothing has changed.

He goes to the stairwell to walk downstairs and ends up standing with his hand on the banister without moving.

The doctor’s shout. The look on Patrick’s face when he said he hadn’t felt anything, and that tiny little spark of hope that sprang to life in Jonny’s gut.

He squishes his eyes together, turns toward the wall of the stairwell, rests his head against the cool concrete, and bites down against a scream.

***

He’s ten minutes late for team dinner. They’ve saved him a seat—an empty chair on either side of his, of course—and Patrick is across from him. Jonny attempts a smile as he sits down. Patrick gives him a quizzical look, though, so it’s probably not very convincing. Jonny just ducks his head and eats as quickly as he can.

He leaves before anyone else is done, giving Seabs a mumbled, “No thanks” when he invites him to hang out, and goes straight back up to the room. Patrick must go up right after him, though, because the door opens barely a minute after he gets back.

“What was—” Patrick tries to ask as soon as he comes through the door, and Jonny bursts out with, “How did you not get it?”

“Huh?” Patrick says.

“How did you not fucking get it?” Jonny says again. It’s louder than he expected, and angrier, too.

Patrick looks startled, but he shrugs. “I don’t know, no one explained to me, I guess.”

“It was in the papers!” Jonny says.

“I don’t know.” Patrick shrugs again. “I’m not supposed to read Hawks press.” Then, when Jonny boggles at him, he adds, “And I didn’t want to ask, you know? Not if it was some weird psychological thing.”

Jonny chokes on his air for a moment, because what even. “You think some weird psychological thing would—would have made me take a buffer with me into a bar so I didn’t brush up against anyone even a little bit? You think it would have made me—we’ve been friends for _months_ and you never even—”

“That’s why I didn’t want to ask!” Patrick waves his hands around a little. “People are weird, man. I didn’t want to judge.”

He looks really earnest, blue eyes wide. Jonny feels his anger draining away and hates that, because Patrick deserves his anger. Because—because Jonny never gets to be angry about anything. He always has to be careful and in control and sometimes he just wants to—

“It’s a _real thing,”_ he says. “I really hurt people.”

“Well, you didn’t hurt me,” Patrick says, flopping onto his bed.

Jonny lets out a long sigh. “I hurt the doctor.”

“What?” Patrick sits up a little. “When?”

“Tonight.” Jonny looks away, sits down. “I went to see him after I left the room. He let me touch him, and…yeah.”

“Oh.” There’s a pause from the other bed. “So what was I, just a fluke?”

There it is: the truth. It scrapes inside Jonny’s chest. Does it hurt as badly as what Jonny did to the doctor, though? As badly as Jonny owes the world, for every hurt he’s caused over the years?

“Yeah.” He picks at the bedspread. “I mean, I guess, or…I don’t know. It’s never happened before.”

“Okay, so here.”

Jonny looks up. Patrick is holding out his hand, like he’s waiting for a dog to sniff it or something. Jonny raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Here.” Patrick shakes the hand. “It didn’t hurt me before, and you want to see if it’ll work again, right?”

If it will work…again. How could it work again? “No,” he says.

“What? Come on.”

_“No,_ Patrick,” Jonny says. “What are you, crazy?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Worst thing happens, it hurts me a little. I’ll survive.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” Jonny pulls his hands under his legs.

Patrick looks at him expectantly for a moment, and then sighs. “Look, I get smashed into by two-hundred-pound guys on the ice every day. I’m pretty sure I can take whatever you’re dishing out. And don’t you want to know?” He waggles his eyebrows a little. “Come on, Jonny, don’t you want to know?”

Jonny looks him in the eye for a long moment. Patrick looks back, no reluctance in his gaze. Of course, that could be because he’s a certified lunatic who didn’t realize that the guy he was rooming with for two months was a live cattle prod, and who is now _taunting_ that guy into touching him.

On the other hand—if Patrick’s right…

“Okay,” he says, and his voice doesn’t shake.

He reaches out a finger and taps it on the back of Patrick’s hand.

He’s expecting a yelp. A hiss of pain. That it was just a fluke, before, and this time Patrick will curl up on the bed with his hand clutched to him, saying how Jonny was right, that _is_ awful.

It doesn’t happen. None of it.

Jonny feels like maybe he must have missed something. Like maybe his memory is blinking out. But his finger remembers the touch, and Patrick is just sitting there, looking back at him with a hint of challenge, like, _That all you got?_

“Okay then,” Jonny says, and this time he takes two fingers and taps them on Patrick’s hand. Still no reaction, so he puts his fingers against Patrick’s hand and leaves them there. Just two fingertips on the cool dry skin. Jonny’s heart is pounding. If this were anyone else, it would be seriously hurting them by now. But Patrick still isn’t reacting, and Jonny’s fingers are still on his hand, and Jonny keeps them there and keeps them there and keeps them there until—

He finally snatches them away, breathing hard.

Patrick is still watching him impassively. “What the hell, man?” Jonny asks.

“I don’t know, it’s your freaky power,” Patrick says, and Jonny just—

He grabs Patrick’s hand in both of his, presses their palms together, slides one hand up to Patrick’s forearm. He squeezes, as hard as he can—the feel of flesh under his hands, soft and giving, like his own except not at all—and Patrick just looks at him like he’s crazy. Jonny tightens his hands, and—

“Okay, now that kind of hurts,” Patrick says.

Jonny yanks his hands back right away. It’s a weird kind of relief: thudding back to earth. “It did? It hurt?”

“No, not like that, dipshit.” Patrick rolls his eyes. “Just, you were kind of trying to break my bones, there.”

“Oh.” Jonny looks at Patrick’s arm, the skin a little red where Jonny was squeezing. He doesn’t leave marks, normally. “Sorry.”

“Hey, you didn’t electrocute me or whatever, so I’m calling it a win,” Patrick says, smirking, and Jonny sits down on the edge of the bed, heavily.

He just touched Patrick. Touched him for a long time—seconds and seconds, the kind of thing he hasn’t done since he was too small to remember. It’s not that there haven’t been accidents—Smithy, pressed suddenly to him by gravity, and Jonny trying to scramble away—but this was different. This was…

“Hey.” Patrick sits down opposite him on the other bed. “What’s up? I thought this would be good news. No pain, yes gain, all that.”

Jonny scrubs a hand over his mouth. The hand is shaking a little. “It’s not that.” He cuts his eyes over to Patrick, a quick scan of torso and limbs. Watching for damage, as if it might just be a delayed reaction. Patrick’s right; this should be a good thing. But: “It means it’s changing.”

“Ohhh,” Patrick says. He nods a couple of times. “But, dude, it’s not like it’s changing in a bad way. It’s not like all of a sudden you’re hurting people just by going near them, or hurting them more, or, like, setting them on fire or—“

“Please stop,” Jonny says, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Oh. Sorry,” Patrick says.

They’re both quiet for a moment. Jonny’s trying to settle himself: trying to find some kind of center, something to pull him back from the edge he feels like he’s on. A way to fit this into the familiar, into the way he knows life has to be.

“You know, it’s probably just about me,” Patrick says. “It’s probably because I’m so awesome. Did you think about that? The power of my awesomeness, like, negates the power of your weirdness, and—”

Jonny throws a pillow at him.


	3. Chapter 3

Jonny tries not to think about it anymore that night. It’s too much to process. Patrick, amazingly enough, doesn’t bring it up—Jonny didn’t think there was anything that could make him shut up, but apparently he can actually be sensitive at times. Jonny might be surprised by that, if he weren’t too busy being surprised by other things.

Everything seems to be pretty normal the next day. Jonny’s on edge, constantly looking around to make sure nothing weird’s going on in his vicinity, nothing that might be because of him. No one on fire yet. No one on the ground screaming in pain. No one getting hurt when they crash into him at morning skate. He doesn’t touch anyone, no one touches him, and it’s all normal. It’s all safe.

Until, that is, he and Patrick are leaving the hotel room to go to the game, and Patrick stops and claps Jonny on the shoulder.

Just a quick press of his hand: palm and fingers, warm through the fabric of Jonny’s shirt. It sends a flash of sensation through Jonny’s gut and shorts out his brain. He’s never—no one’s ever—he’s been touched through his pads, but he can’t feel it then, not like this. Like this he can feel the shape of Patrick’s hand, the pressure of each of his fingers. It makes him stop, body incapable of moving, as the foreign sensation spreads itself over his skin.

And then it’s gone. Patrick’s moving on, opening the door, going out into the hallway. Jonny needs to follow him, needs to—but even as his legs carry him after Patrick down the hall, most of him is still stuck back there. Feeling Patrick’s hand on his back.

It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, a million times. Patrick slapping other teammates on the shoulder, other guys doing it back to him. It’s the most routine of touches. But he’s never done it to Jonny before. No one’s ever done it to Jonny before.

Is this what it feels like all the time when people touch each other? How do they make it through the day?

He’s still in a daze when they reach the lobby. He keeps cutting his eyes over to Patrick, and he trips over his feet a little getting on the bus (he goes before the rest of the team; no risks), and when he makes it to his seat he clasps his hands together and tells himself stop thinking about it. They have a game to play; he can’t afford this kind of distraction.

When he’s changing in his private room, though, he presses his hand to his shoulder, just once, in the same place Patrick did it, and he closes his eyes and rides out the sensation.

***

It takes a couple of hours for it to occur to Jonny that if Patrick touched him once, he might do it again.

For some reason, the thought catches him by surprise. Obviously Patrick could touch him again. But the idea makes his skin prickle and his gaze slide away from the reporter he’s supposed to be talking to.

Patrick might not, of course. That touch by the door could have been a one-time thing. It’s probably a habit by now, not touching him, and if Patrick were smart he wouldn’t break it: they don’t know what’s made Patrick immune so far, and it could fail. The next time he touches Jonny, he could end up screaming.

That doesn’t stop Jonny from being jumpy around him. He tries as hard as he can not to think about it. But that night he lies in bed and the thoughts creep in, about how Patrick might touch him next. He might ruffle Jonny’s hair on the way to the shower. Or flick him on the ear like he did to Sharpy the other day. Or nudge him on the arm.

The thoughts feel forbidden. Jonny’s worked so hard for so many years not to think about the things he’s missing. Even picturing someone else touching him seems like an infraction. But he lets himself go one further, before he stops: Patrick might put an arm around his shoulder. Then he’d be all pressed up against Jonny, all up and down their sides, and…

Jonny has to squeeze his eyes shut and breathe deeply, until his heart stops beating so hard and he can finally fall asleep.

When it happens next, though, it’s none of the ways Jonny’s thought of. They’re in the next hotel room, relaxing after a flight. Jonny’s sitting on the side of one of the beds messing with his phone, and Patrick’s lying on the other and going on about how he’s always thought Canada should feel more different—“Like, shouldn’t the trees look weird or something? I’m not asking for much”—even though he grew up in Buffalo, which is about five seconds away from the border. Jonny’s stretching his legs out into the space between the beds, trying to work out some of the kinks from the last game, and when Patrick gets up to go to the bathroom, he lets his foot bump over Jonny’s ankles as he goes by.

Jonny freezes.

It—it’s just so casual. That’s what makes his mind go blank: the easy thoughtlessness of it. They’re in the same space, and so of course Patrick would touch him. Let his toes drag over Jonny’s ankles just because they’re there.

Jonny can feel the streaks of warmth they left behind. That doesn’t make sense—there was a sock and a pair of jeans separating him from Patrick’s skin, so he probably couldn’t feel any real warmth—but the feeling still buzzes through him, swarming in his belly.

The bathroom door opens again. He hears Patrick come back into the room. Then, “Uh, are you okay?”

Fuck. Jonny needs to pull himself together. “Yeah,” he says, and it only sounds a little off to his ears. “Yeah, of course.”

“Because I just told you like ten reasons America is better than Canada, and you didn’t disagree,” Patrick says. “I figured you must be dead.”

Did he? He must have been shouting from the bathroom, and Jonny was too dazed to notice. “I guess you were just so wrong I didn’t know where to begin.”

“See, there’s the Jonny we all know and love,” Patrick says. He crosses by Jonny and pokes him, right in the middle of the cheek, and Jonny—Jonny can’t help it. He makes a noise.

Patrick jumps back, yanking his hand away. “Oh my God, dude, did I hurt you? I’m so sorry, I don’t really know how your thing works.”

“No, I.” Jonny can’t think of anything to respond with. Patrick’s _finger_ was on his _face._ He—

He wants it to happen again.

“No,” he repeats. He can feel Patrick’s eyes on him. It makes him feel overexposed, like all the pieces of him have been knocked loose and Patrick might see through them. He pulls his legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around them.

“Dude.” Patrick settles on the bed next to him, and Jonny feels the mattress dip and then the whisper of warmth as Patrick’s knee comes close to his arm. It makes his skin hum all along that side, and he tries not to lean into it. “Are you actually okay?”

“Yeah,” Jonny says, but he can hear it come out all breathy. “Of course.”

“Are you sure?” Patrick puts a hand on Jonny’s arm. “Because you look a little—”

“Oh my God, _stop,”_ Jonny says, squeezing his eyes shut and breathing hard.

Patrick startles and pulls back a little, loosening his grip but not letting go. “Stop what?”

Jonny tries to come up with an answer. But he can’t think at all: can only try to deal with the overwhelming feelings of Patrick’s fingers through the fabric of his shirt. It just keeps going, on and on and—

“Oh my God,” Patrick says softly. “You’ve never been touched, have you?”

“You knew that,” Jonny gets out through a jaw that’s quivering with maxed-out nerves.

“No, but, like, ever,” Patrick says, as if that’s a meaningful distinction, and then oh God _his palm is sliding up Jonny’s arm—_

Jonny takes in a shuddering breath that might have a sob at the end of it. The touch firms for a second, and then it’s gone, Patrick rocking back on his heels. The absence of contact swoops through Jonny’s stomach, cold and sudden.

“Okay,” Patrick says, while Jonny tries to deal with the lack of what was so overwhelming just a second ago. “I can deal with this.”

Jonny waits for him to explain, but he doesn’t—just gets up and goes to his own bed and pulls out the YA novel of the week. Jonny sits on the bed for another few minutes, nerves quaking, and then he stands up.

“I’m just gonna—” he says, and goes out and walks the halls of the hotel until it’s late enough to go to bed.

Patrick’s already asleep by the time Jonny gets back to the room, even though it’s not curfew yet. Jonny’s grateful: it means he can slide into bed without feeling watched.

He lies down and shivers himself to sleep, the ghosts of Patrick’s touches ambushing him in his dreams.

***

The next day, when they’re heading to a game, Patrick stops Jonny by the door and runs his hands up Jonny’s arms. Both hands, from the elbow to the shoulder. Then he turns and goes out, while Jonny stares after him, lost.

***

The day after that, they’re headed out the door to practice when Patrick strokes down Jonny’s shoulder blade.

Jonny’s hands are still shaking when he laces up his skates.

***

The day after that, they have another game, and Jonny doesn’t even go to the door when Patrick gets up to leave. Patrick turns to him, expectant, and takes a step back towards him, but Jonny raises a hand. “Don’t—not before a game, man.”

Patrick’s face is confused, then understanding.

“It’s not like—” Jonny starts, and then wishes he hadn’t tried to say anything. His stomach squirms. “It’s just—”

“No, hey, it’s okay,” Patrick says. His voice is surprisingly soft. “I guess I didn’t think it through.”

Jonny looks at him, at the steady clearness of the blue eyes looking back at him, and he does want it, suddenly: the warm pressure of Patrick’s hands on his skin. Wants them to get a grip on him and hold tightly, as if they can keep together the pieces of him that are threatening to quake apart. Wants it so much his skin is tingling.

“Let’s go,” he says, and keeps a solid foot between himself and Patrick as they walk out.

***

The yearning doesn’t go away during the game, even when he puts it out of his head long enough to skate a shift. His skin is sensitized, primed for a touch that hasn’t come yet. His pads press on his skin and he hates it, because it’s the wrong kind of touch.

He almost slides close enough on the bench to press up against Patrick. He thinks about it: it wouldn’t be too strange, because he wears enough layers during hockey that even non-padded parts of his body aren’t much of a risk. But he usually avoids off-ice touch anyway, just to be safe, and it might look weird if he changed that now. Weird to the rest of the team, weird to Patrick. Jonny doesn’t want him to know how badly he wants it.

By the time they get back to their hotel room, he’s feeling unsteady. Some of the guys went out, but Patrick didn’t; he follows Jonny in the door. Jonny knows it doesn’t mean anything, knows that a lot of the guys are tired after so many days on the road and his fellow rookies more than anyone. Knows he can’t expect anything of Patrick just because he wants it. Hell, after their conversation that afternoon, Patrick might have decided that it wasn’t a good idea after all—that his crazy plan of touching Jonny or whatever was just that: crazy. He might not do it again. And if he doesn’t, Jonny needs to be okay with it.

He sits on his bed against the pillows and watches Patrick wander around the room, sorting through his suitcase and fiddling with his hair in the bathroom mirror. _No one’s going to see it tonight,_ Jonny wants to say, but he’s not sure it would come out snarky enough: he’s drawn too tight with waiting, with wanting. Waiting for something that might not come. Wanting something he might not be able to have anymore.

Patrick comes back out of the bathroom. Jonny examines the seam of his jeans. His pulse feels sick-loud, like his heart is thundering away in his chest to a rhythm that’s just a little bit off.

“Hey.” Patrick’s standing right next to him, and suddenly Jonny can’t look. He keeps his eyes on his jeans, not really seeing anything. Every nerve he has is straining towards Patrick.

Patrick shifts slightly, and the warmth of his palm settles over Jonny’s neck.

Jonny lets his breath out in a gust. Patrick’s hand is cupping the back of his neck: gentle, fingertips digging in just the slightest bit, pressing on muscles that have been tight all day. It warms Jonny’s entire body. He feels his muscles relaxing, knots of tension melting away as the curve of Patrick’s palm cradles him.

Maybe thirty seconds, and then Patrick’s hand slides away. “Wanna watch a movie?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Jonny says, and he’s amazed that he has any breath with which to speak at all.

Patrick goes to sit on the other bed, and he flips through the channels until he finds one of the Die Hard movies. Jonny’s not sure which one; he’s too busy trying not to look at Patrick and tuning out the chant in his mind, the one going, _Again, more, please, just touch me._

***

They fly home two days later. Jonny’s relieved to be back in his own space, away from hotels and all the crowded spaces where he never actually felt safe from touching anyone, but he’s nervous, too. He’s not going to be spending all his time with Patrick anymore. Patrick won’t be nearby to administer the daily touches that send shivers skittering up Jonny’s spine and make his whole chest warm.

It’s probably a good thing. Jonny needs to clear his head. He feels off-kilter, like he had this great equilibrium going for nineteen years and then Patrick came along and upset it in a single moment. After what Jonny said about the game, Patrick switched to touching him at night: a stray brush of a hand as they swapped places in the bathroom; a palm on Jonny’s back as he unlocked the room.

It means that it’s taken Jonny a lot longer to fall asleep than usual. A few days away from that is probably what he needs to recenter himself.

Besides, he’ll still be seeing Patrick at the rink, and Patrick will probably touch him there.

Except that Patrick doesn’t. Jonny’s braced for it, the whole practice after they’re back. He doesn’t think Patrick would be so stupid as to touch him on the ice or on the bench—that would lead to all sorts of questions that Jonny doesn’t want to answer, and can’t—but he’s half-expecting it anyway, tracking Patrick even more than he normally does during practice. But Patrick’s just his normal self, goofing off with Sharpy and getting slick shots past Khabi and stealing the puck from Jonny without so much as raising a hand to brush his jersey.

In the locker room afterward, then. Jonny usually goes to hang out for a couple of minutes before he changes, so that he can feel like part of the team and not just the weirdo who only shows up on the ice. He doesn’t stay by the door this time, though: he goes across to Patrick’s stall, leaning casually against an empty one, as if this is a normal thing to do.

“Oh hey,” Patrick says, and Jonny thinks, this is it. He’s only wearing his thin undergloves, and it would be so easy for Patrick to sneak a few fingers up the sleeve of his jersey and brush the skin of his wrist. Jonny digs his fingers into the padding on his thigh.

“Good practice, huh?” Patrick says.

“Yeah,” Jonny says. This is where he’d normally bring up something they could work on, something he and Patrick tried that did or didn’t work, but he can’t think his way clear of those fingers. The way they might feel on his skin. His stomach is clenching for it.

He doesn’t want to feel this way. He wants their friendship to be about hockey, not about…whatever this longing is. The desire to be touched.

The skin on his wrist prickles.

“What?” he asks, because Patrick’s just said something to him.

“I said, did you want to go to lunch?” Patrick asks, huffing impatiently.

“Keep your panties on, sure,” Jonny says, with a little zing of adrenaline, just as Patrick turns and calls out, “Hey, Sharpy, Burs, you guys up for lunch?”

The adrenaline shrivels up and sits heavy in Jonny’s stomach. But this is better: he doesn’t need to be waiting the whole lunch for Patrick to do something. It can just be an ordinary lunch with teammates, and he can stop going crazy over this thing that doesn’t matter at all.

He goes home after the lunch—patio at the Terrace, Jonny on the edge of the crowd, no one at risk of brushing up against him—and sits on the couch in his empty living room. He traces his hands over each of the spots Patrick’s touched so far—arm, ankle, shoulders, neck, back—presses his fingers in and lets his breath out in a shuddering sigh and curls up around the empty feeling in his stomach.

***

Of course, it’s the NHL, so they’re back on the road sooner rather than later.

Jonny tries not to hope for too much because holy God, this is going to actually drive him crazy and he’s here for hockey. He hasn’t been alone with Patrick in five days, but that doesn’t mean Patrick’s going to pounce on him as soon as they are alone. Patrick probably hasn’t even been thinking about it. Patrick touches people all the time. Jonny sees it in the locker room: watches the trails his hands leave in the air as they bounce from one teammate to another. These touches don’t mean anything to him like they do to Jonny.

He’s jittery on the plane ride. He’s sitting alone, of course, and he watches Patrick two rows up, squabbling with Burs and getting shoved and shoving back. Jonny puts his hands on his own arms and thinks, _Patrick could do that to me,_ and he hates the sick thrill that goes through him.

By the time they get to the hotel room he’s strung out on it, thin with adrenaline and longing and bitter annoyance at himself for feeling any of this in the first place. The door closes behind them, and his stomach jumps, but all that happens is that Patrick throws himself on the bed farthest from the door.

“Ha, claimed it!” he crows, and Jonny sits down on the other bed and tries to keep his arms and legs from shaking.

Patrick doesn’t get it. He must not get it, or he wouldn’t be acting like this was nothing, a week of not touching after what happened last week. He wouldn’t have done any of this in the first place, if he got it: teased Jonny with a few little touches, never lasting long enough, never predictable, just waking up Jonny’s nerves and not doing anything to calm them down again. It’s not fair, really. Two weeks ago, Jonny was fine, never expected to feel anyone else’s skin against his for more than a screaming second, and then Patrick had to go and—

“Hey, do you want to go to the pool?” Patrick asks. “I was just thinking, I haven’t gone swimming in a while.”

“Yes,” Jonny says right away. That’s what he needs. To work off this crazy restless energy and not think about things that may or may not happen.

Patrick taps him once on the belly, lightly, right before they get in. Jonny swims two hundred laps.

***

The next day, instead of napping before the game, Jonny falls into a daydream about what would happen if Patrick touched him for longer. He doesn’t mean to—sleep is important—but he thinks about it and then he can’t get the idea out of his head: not one of these second-long touches that make his nerves spark and fizz and his gut ache for something that’s already gone, but a real, lingering touch. A hand that rests on his arm and stays there. An arm around his shoulders while they watch a movie. A thigh that presses up against his and doesn’t move away.

He tries to imagine what that would feel like, and the harder he tries, the more awful he feels, but he can’t stop. It’s like he’s reaching for something that keeps getting yanked out of the way.

When he gets up from his “nap,” Patrick takes one look at his face and blinks. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Jonny says, surly. “Let’s get to the game.”

They lose. Afterward, Jonny’s exhausted, aching and practically vibrating. They get back to the room, and he faceplants on the bed.

“Hey,” Patrick says. His hand brushes over the back of Jonny’s knee, and Jonny fucking _snaps._

“Don’t you dare,” he says, spinning around and facing Patrick, who leaps back from the bed. “Don’t you _fucking—”_

“Whoa, whoa, sorry,” Patrick says. He backs up further, hits his legs against the other bed. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“What—what are you even trying to do?” Jonny asks. His head is pounding, a dark and ugly throb of blood in his temples. “Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

“No!” Patrick puts his hands up and almost topples back onto the other bed. “I was just—I thought it might help. Getting you used to touch, or whatever.” 

“All you’re doing is—” Jonny fists his hand in the bedspread. He’s breathing hard, and Patrick is looking at him with a kicked-puppy expression. “You’re just—you touch me, for, like, for two seconds, and it makes me—it makes me want—”

Patrick’s mouth falls open. Jonny lets himself fall face-forward onto the bed again, buries his nose in the bedspread.

“I didn’t know,” Patrick says quietly.

“Yeah. You didn’t,” Jonny grits out. He feels curiously flat, like he’s on an elevator that finally slammed to a halt at the bottom of the shaft.

It’s right that he said this. He couldn’t keep letting Patrick touch him. He needs to be able to sleep again, to play good hockey, to not go insane.

Patrick’s never going to touch him again.

“All right, move over,” Patrick says from right next to him, and his knee nudges at Jonny’s side.

Jonny scrambles up and back. “Wait. What?”

“You were right. I was doing it wrong.” Patrick’s half on the bed, propped up on one arm and one leg and looming over Jonny. “You want to be touched?”

Jonny lets himself fall back down to the bed, still with space between him and Patrick. “What?” he says again.

Patrick gestures with his hand. “You want to be touched?” He lies down on the bed, on his side. “Get over here.”

Jonny does want it. Oh God, how he does. His body is screaming for it, his pulse pounding in his ears. But—but he can’t. Can’t just slide over there and claim it. Can’t move.

He looks across at what Patrick is offering, what he can’t make himself go for, and Patrick huffs a sigh. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters, and starts climbing across the bed. “You’d better tell me if you don’t want this, man,” he says, and then he’s right next to Jonny and his arm is across Jonny’s back and his chest is against Jonny’s side and he’s _staying_ there, not moving, he’s just resting against Jonny’s back all warm and solid and heavy and—

Jonny makes a noise into the bedspread that Patrick doesn’t comment on. He just tips his head forward against Jonny’s shoulder, so that his nose and mouth are pressing against the thin fabric of Jonny’s henley. Jonny—Jonny can feel his _breath._

There’s a trembling somewhere deep within him, right in his core. A fluttering thing, like a stilted, feeble version of the hope he crushed a couple of weeks ago when the doctor screamed at his touch. Something warm and shaky coming back to life.

Patrick’s arm is across his back. He’s practically holding him.

“Is that better?” Patrick asks, muffled by Jonny’s shoulder, and Jonny just presses closer. Doesn’t even care if it’s shameless anymore. Patrick’s leg is nudging up against his, the solid warmth of his thigh, and Jonny just wants to close his eyes and never ever leave this place.

It’s silent for long minutes, Patrick breathing hotly against Jonny’s shoulder and Jonny’s body riding the wave of touch. Just when he thinks it’s going to get less overwhelming, that he’s going to get used to it, it turns a corner and he finds his breath catching and he’s desperate for it again.

And it’s always there, when he gets desperate for it. It’s always still there.

“So,” Patricks says, breaking the silence after maybe fifteen minutes. “Your puck handling tonight, tell me: awful or just pretty bad?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jonny whispers, and Patrick tightens his arm around him.


	4. Chapter 4

They separate when Patrick gets up to brush his teeth. He rolls away from Jonny and says, “All right, bedtime for me, man,” and Jonny lies there for another ten or fifteen minutes and lets the ghost of Patrick’s touch sink into his skin.

He feels off balance when he finally gets up. Like his body is new, somehow: not the one he’s been dragging around for nineteen years. Nothing’s changed about it, but every breath, every movement, feels like it’s bringing things into contact that don’t usually touch.

They don’t sleep in the same bed. Jonny thinks about it, when he comes out of the bathroom to see Patrick already in bed: thinks for one crazy moment about just sliding in next to him. But, no. Patrick already cuddled ( _cuddled_ ) with him for over an hour. Jonny has to give him his space.

It’s enough. It’s more than enough.

When he wakes up in the morning, it’s ten minutes before his alarm. He feels really well-rested, really awake, and he looks across at Patrick and thinks, _He’s going to touch me again today._

Then he stops and takes the thought back, because he doesn’t know that. He can’t demand hour-long cuddle sessions from his teammate every day. Hell, can’t actually demand them at all. It’s up to Patrick, when or if he ever decides—

Jonny gets up and gets dressed and brushes his teeth, and he’s messing with his phone when Patrick finally does get up. Jonny tries not to look at him. He doesn’t want Patrick to think that he expects anything, or that he feels weird about last night, or anything like that.

“Oh my God, you weirdo,” Patrick says, exasperated, a few minutes later. Jonny’s about to say that he’s not doing anything weird—he’s not even looking in Patrick’s direction—but then Patrick does a sort of flying leap at his bed, slinging himself around Jonny’s back like he’s getting a sitting piggyback ride.

“What the fuck, Patrick,” Jonny says.

“You are _so weird,”_ Patrick says. His legs are crossed over Jonny’s lap, and it’s kind of a bizarre position, but his entire chest is plastered up against Jonny’s back and Jonny can feel warmth trickling down his limbs.

“You’re the one who just, like, flying tackled me,” he mutters.

“Yeah, and you’re staying here for at least five minutes.” Patrick swings his body to the side, toppling Jonny onto the bed, and before Jonny can finish articulating his _oof,_ Patrick swings a leg over his and pins him.

“Now, sh,” Patrick says, and Jonny thinks about objecting, but Patrick’s foot strokes along his calf, and he’s shivering too hard to complain.

***

This is bad, Jonny realizes. Well, it’s good—it’s amazing—but it’s too amazing, and that’s the problem. He’s not going to be able to give this up. He used to be okay never being touched, but then Patrick popped into his life as this bizarre exception to all rules, and now he’s getting dependent and he’s not going to be able to handle it whenever Patrick gets tired of his little cuddle project and stops.

He’s already going crazy from it. He thought it would be better when he was getting enough touch to satisfy him—but it turns out that there’s no such thing as enough, and he spends the whole plane ride clenching and releasing his hands on the armrests of his seat.

“Give me a ride home?” Patrick asks when they’re at the airport, and Jonny looks at him in surprise, because he never gives anyone rides. Patrick shrugs. “I came with Sharpy.”

“Um, sure,” Jonny says, and it’s pretty much normal all the way back—until he pulls up outside Patrick’s condo and Patrick leans over and pulls him into a hug.

Jonny stiffens for just a second. Then he lets out a deep sigh and settles his forehead against Patrick’s shoulder and brings his hands up to rest on Patrick’s back. He’s never hugged anyone like this before, and he might have worried that he wouldn’t know what to do, but it turns out it’s instinctive. Stay close to Patrick. Touch him. Feel his breath on your neck and let your stomach flip over and don’t let go.

Patrick pulls back after a few minutes. He doesn’t say anything—just grins at Jonny and hops out.

They have a day off the next day, and Jonny sleeps later and better than he usually does. He lies in bed for a while after he wakes up, remembering the feel of Patrick’s arms. It keeps overtaking him during the day, when he’s cooking and running errands and working out: a rush of warmth that makes him forget what he’s doing.

He doesn’t know how he got this lucky. To find someone who isn’t affected by his touch in the first place, and then to have that someone be Patrick, who’s willing to touch him like this and hold him and feed this gnawing hunger he didn’t even know he had.

Because it is a hunger. Jonny’s consumed by it: the second Patrick takes his hands off him, he wants them back again, and now—now they’re at home for almost two weeks and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

He goes up to Patrick after practice on their second day back. His hands are shaking at the nerve of doing this, but he balls them up and says, as soon as Patrick comes out of the locker room, “Hey, want to come over and watch a movie?”

Patrick looks surprised for a moment. But then he grins. “If you feed me.”

Jonny’s still nervous when they get back to his place. He thinks that maybe, because he did the inviting, he’s supposed to instigate physical contact, too. It’s not like there are rules for this—for touching your touch-deprived teammate—but what if Patrick thinks that’s how it works, and he doesn’t make a move to touch Jonny? Then Jonny will have to do it, and he doesn’t know if he can bring himself to.

And what if Patrick doesn’t do it, but it’s because he doesn’t want to? What if Jonny does something and Patrick doesn’t want it, but he goes along with it because he feels obligated?

By the time they’ve ordered food, Jonny’s stomach hurts so much he’s not sure he’ll be able to eat it. “So, um,” he says, perching on one end of the couch. There’s a lot of space next to him, in case Patrick wants to sit down and not touch Jonny. “What did you want to watch? I have some DVDs, and there’s Netflix, or…”

“Ooh.” Patrick grabs a DVD box and flops onto the couch, right next to Jonny and sort of leaning against him, so that his back is against Jonny’s chest. Jonny’s breath catches. “Can we watch _Lost_? I’ve only seen the first season, and I don’t even know what the invisible dinosaur thingy is.”

Jonny’s trying not to breathe weirdly. This is so much better than he was expecting. “Well, if you want that, you’ll have to get off me so I can put the DVD in.”

Just saying it makes him lightheaded, that he’s acknowledging the way Patrick’s lying half on top of him, and he tastes bright metal in his mouth. But Patrick just scooches over a couple of inches. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, handing Jonny the disc. “So demanding.”

Jonny puts the disc in and doesn’t turn back around until he thinks he can avoid looking like an idiot. He’s not sure what his face is doing: some mix of nerves and a silly little grin, and he bites down on his lip hard before he turns around. Patrick is sprawled across the couch, watching him, and he shifts over silently to let Jonny reposition himself before leaning back against Jonny’s chest again.

Jonny eases an arm over Patrick’s shoulder and lets it hang down on the other side. It makes his heart pound to do it, but Patrick just takes Jonny’s hand and positions it on his forearm, so that their arms are pressed together. Jonny can feel the bare skin of Patrick’s arm under his fingers, the light layer of hair, the bones that shift whenever Patrick moves his hand. The smell of Patrick’s shampoo fills his nose. He feels dizzy.

He has no idea what happens on _Lost_. When the food comes, they separate to eat it, but it’s okay because Patrick presses his feet against Jonny’s legs from his spot on the other end of the couch. Then after they eat, Patrick yawns and lies down with his head in Jonny’s lap.

Jonny’s startled by it—lets his hand flutter in midair for a moment before resting it on Patrick’s head. He moves his fingers cautiously against the curls, not sure if that’s allowed, but Patrick gives a happy sigh, and so Jonny settles his fingers more heavily in his hair and drinks in the warmth of his scalp.

***

So now apparently Jonny’s allowed to touch Patrick when they’re not on the road. That’s a good thing, since the hockey travel schedule is way too erratic for his peace of mind. As it is, he still finds himself desperate for touch in places where he can’t get it: at practice, or between periods of a game, or at meals with the team. There’s one time about a week later when he’s sitting across from Patrick at a restaurant, the team all around them, and he keeps zoning out staring at Patrick’s hands on the knife and fork. Those hands actually held his last night, Patrick just taking his hands and interlacing their fingers like it was no big deal, and now he can’t stop thinking about it, even when Patrick catches him and grins and makes him flush.

A moment later, someone’s foot nudges his ankle, and Jonny jumps.

“You okay there, Tazer?” Seabs asks, and Jonny nods hurriedly and darts his eyes to Patrick’s. There’s no one else’s foot it could be—everyone on the team knows to lean their legs away from Jonny’s at these things, and anyway, no one’s screaming in pain—but he still can’t believe Patrick is doing this, here, now. 

Patrick grins harder. His foot slides up Jonny’s calf. Jonny digs into his food and tries to ignore the burning in his cheeks.

***

By the time they fly again, Jonny’s gotten so used to cuddling with Patrick that it’s weird that they can’t do it on the plane. Well, he supposes they could—but he doesn’t really want to tell the team about what’s going on with Patrick. It’s so hard to get people to understand his touch thing in the first place, especially since there is no actual explanation for it, and having this sudden exception will create all kinds of confusion and questions that Jonny doesn’t want to deal with. He likes it best when everyone lets him do his thing without asking about it.

He’s glad that Patrick seems to get that and hasn’t said anything to anyone. At least, he’s glad in theory. Sitting on the airplane, watching Patrick switch seat partners every five minutes but never come near him, he kind of wishes Patrick were a little less discreet.

Patrick’s excited about going home to Buffalo. He’s telling everyone about the posters his sisters made to hold up at the game tonight, showing pictures on his phone, and it’s sort of ridiculous but he’s so happy that everyone’s laughing with him rather than at him.

He does come bouncing over to Jonny’s row at one point. “Jonny, did you see what my sisters made for me?” he says, holding out the phone.

He’s grinning, and last night Jonny got to lean his head against his shoulder while they watched a movie. “Yes, Patrick, they love you the most,” Jonny says. It’s meant to be sarcasm, but it’s pretty clearly true, so it comes out only about half as dry as he means it to.

“Yeah, but you have to _see,”_ Patrick says, and he holds out the phone for Jonny to take. When he does, Patrick leaves his hand there, fingers pressed together in a way that’s obviously intentional.

Jonny doesn’t see the pictures that clearly. Skin-on-skin contact still does that to him: he’s getting used to it, way more used to it, but it still seems to take his entire focus whenever it happens.

Until, that is, Patrick scrolls one picture to the left. “Um, is that a _crown?”_ Jonny asks.

Patrick beams. “They wanted to make me a tiara, but I told them to save that for you.”

Jonny sputters a little bit, even though it’s hard to sputter when Patrick is basically holding his hand.

Patrick takes the phone (and his hand) away after that, to go bother Laddy. Jonny counts the minutes until they land, and then the minutes after that until they’ll be in the hotel room.

***

Except when they get to the airport, Dale calls out, “Kaner, your family picking you up from here?”

“Yes, sir!” Patrick calls back, beaming ridiculously widely.

“Oh,” Jonny says, from where he’s walking next to Patrick, not-quite-seasonal parka in place to prevent accidental airport contact. “Um, so are you guys going out to lunch? Do you want me to take your bag to the hotel, or…”

“Oh, no, I’m staying with them tonight,” Patrick says blithely, and then he starts talking about the restaurant they’re going to, and how his mom promised to make his favorite breakfast tomorrow, but Jonny isn’t quite listening properly because he’s trying to process the part where Patrick won’t be in their hotel room.

It’s not a big deal. It’s not like Patrick’s under contract to provide him with all the touch he needs, and anyway, they spent hours together yesterday and will probably hang out tomorrow after they get back to Chicago. Jonny can go a day without touching anyone. Hell, he went about sixteen years without ever touching anyone before a couple of weeks ago. There’s no excuse for the scary empty feeling in his gut at the thought of Patrick being gone tonight.

“That sounds awesome, man, hope you have a great time,” he says, trying to conjure up the right level of enthusiasm without being obviously fake.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Patrick says. “You’re coming, too,” and Jonny stops walking.

There’s a crashing of suitcases behind him, and he turns around to see Sharpy on the floor. “Jesus, Tazer, be careful,” Sharpy says, picking himself up. “I almost—” He waves a hand. “You know.”

Fuck. Fuck, he really just—Jonny’s wearing the parka, sure, but it’s not as good as hockey pads, and he just suddenly stopped walking in the middle of a hallway with no warning. Anything could have happened. There could be a screaming pileup of people around him right now, if he’d been less lucky.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and he apologizes about five more times before Sharpy starts rolling his eyes.

“Kaner, call off your dog, I’m fine,” Sharpy says, and Patrick hits Jonny with his paperback.

“You obviously didn’t mean it. Chill,” Patrick says.

“That’s not the point,” Jonny tries to say, and it’s not—the point is that it’s his responsibility to be vigilant, to avoid accidents—but he gets cut off when Patrick spots his family and they all start screaming.

The girls made signs for the airport, too, big poster boards covered in glitter and Patrick’s name, and Patrick gestures Jonny after him and then spends forever hugging each of them twice and his mom and dad extra long. “And this is Jonny,” he says when the hugfest is over.

“Nice to meet you, Jonny,” Mr. Kane says, holding out his hand, and Patrick and at least two of the girls scream, “Dad!”

“What?” Mr. Kane says, alarmed. “What?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to touch him,” Mrs. Kane says with a hand on her husband’s arm, and Mr. Kane’s eyes go wide.

Jonny’s face feels hot. He has to go through this every time he meets new people, and it never feels any better. At least they already know his deal, so he doesn’t have to convince them.

“Nice to meet you all,” he says with an awkward little wave. The girls give him big smiles that are just a little bit frightening.

“Hi, Jonny,” one of them says, stressing his name. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

“Hey now,” Patrick says, warning, though Jonny could tell him not to worry. It’s not like he’s even capable of hooking up with one of them.

“Why don’t we go to lunch?” Mrs. Kane says, and Jonny is very glad of the suggestion, and even gladder when it turns out she called ahead to the restaurant and got them a booth with plenty of space.

***

Being in the Kane house is weird. Jonny’s so used to Patrick in the context of the Hawks that it’s hard to think of him having had this whole other life before this year. Patrick insists on giving Jonny a thorough tour, even when his sisters shriek and hurry to close their bedroom doors, and he has a story for every room they stop in. “And here’s where Erica knocked out one of my baby teeth with a Polly Pocket,” he’s saying, when Mrs. Kane comes up with a pile of sheets and towels.

“Jonny, I’m doing up the air mattress in Patrick’s room for you,” she says. “Patty, you’re welcome to stay there too, of course, but I was wondering if you might want to stay on the couch, given…”

She trails off in the way people usually do when they don’t know what to say about Jonny’s touch thing. Patrick just rolls his eyes. “We room together on the road all the time. We’re used to navigating.” He takes the pile of sheets from his mom. “Come on, Jonny, the grand finale,” he says, waggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah, real grand, I’m sure,” Jonny says, but he follows, of course. He hesitates inside the door—he wants to shut it behind him, but he doesn’t want Patrick to think he’s hoping for anything. Even though he is. But the idea of Patrick knowing that makes something sick and squirmy go through his insides.

Patrick solves the problem by reaching around him and shutting the door. “And here’s the room you’ve been waiting for,” he says, waving around, and then—then he reaches down and takes Jonny’s hand.

He hasn’t actually done that before. He’s laced their fingers together while they were pressed together in other ways, and Jonny would have thought that that would be more intense, but this is intense in a whole different way. His only contact with Patrick is through their hands, and he wants more than that, yet at the same time he feels…contained. Anchored. Like Patrick’s hand is holding onto all of him and vice versa.

Patrick tugs him over to the bookcase to show him his autograph collection, and Jonny likes that a lot: Patrick using his grip on Jonny’s body to make it do things. No one ever does that, not like this. No one ever gets to have a grip on his body.

It’s fun seeing all the bits of Patrick that make up his room, too, especially when Jonny finds the old photo album from Patrick’s awkward stage. “Don’t even _think_ about putting any of this on the internet,” Patrick says, and wrestles him for it, and that’s new, too.

They’re supposed to take a nap here before the game, and Jonny starts throwing the sheets over the air mattress. But Patrick says, “Uh, that thing really sucks, man.” Jonny looks up at him, and he’s sort of hovering by the bed, scuffing his toe against the frame. “You could, uh, just share with me? If you want?”

Jonny wants. Of course he wants. “Won’t it be a little small?” he asks, since it’s only a twin.

“Yeah, but, you know, we can squish,” Patrick says. There’s a faint tinge of red over his cheekbones.

Jonny nods, because he doesn’t trust his voice, and then he says, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

They strip down to their boxers and t-shirts, and Patrick lifts up the covers of his childhood bed and gestures for Jonny to slide in.

Jonny’s never slept in a bed with someone else before. He’s sure that he’ll be too hyped up to sleep, but Patrick spoons up behind him and puts an arm around his waist, and the sheets are soft and smell like Patrick’s laundry detergent, and Patrick is warmth and touch and the steady rise and fall of breath behind him and Jonny can’t keep his eyes open. For the first time ever, he drifts off to sleep in someone’s arms.

***

Jonny wakes up slowly, enveloped in warmth. In Patrick.

He doesn’t want to get up. He’s so happy and comfortable and warm, just like he imagined when he was little and used to fall asleep with his arms around himself, except so much better because it’s real. If he gets up he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get it again.

But he does get up—gets up and plays and tries not to think about Patrick pressed up against him in his sleep. Later that night, after they’ve lost to Buffalo and Patrick is subdued and Jonny is running over plays in his head to see what they could have done better, they watch game tape on Patrick’s laptop until Patrick says, “Enough.” Then he arranges them both in his bed like it’s automatic, like there’s no other place Jonny would possibly belong, and Jonny gets to spend a whole night with Patrick’s arms around him.

***

It’s a little disturbing how much Jonny looks forward to their next road trip after that. He knows that’s not normal: most guys hate being on the road, the guys with families especially, and Jonny’s right there with them on a lot of it. Traveling sucks, planes suck, hotel food sucks more often than not. But maybe he’ll get to spend the night with Patrick again.

It’s not like he doesn’t hang out with Patrick in the interim. But at the end of the evening, Patrick always stands up and says, “Well, gotta head back to Stan’s,” and then Jonny has to go to bed alone. Which—is fine. Tons of people go to bed alone every night, including Jonny for most of his life, but something desperate has been awoken in him. He doesn’t know how long Patrick will go on wanting to do this, to get him used to touch or whatever, and he feels like he has to soak up as much of it as he can before it’s gone forever.

Their next flight is to Ottawa. This time Patrick doesn’t come over to talk to him at all—not that Jonny expects it, but still, a little part of him is hoping. But Patrick sits quietly in his seat a few rows up and doesn’t move.

If Patrick were in the same row as him, he could lean his head on Jonny’s shoulder and sleep. But Jonny tries not to think about that too much.

Jonny catches up to him in the airport, but Patrick is subdued, and he doesn’t say anything on the bus to the hotel. By the time they get to the hotel room, Jonny’s convinced something’s wrong.

He hovers awkwardly by his bed and feels the silence twisting in his stomach. Finally he says, “Is everything okay?”

Patrick looks up, startled. “Oh. Yeah. Or, well.” He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Actually, no.”

Jonny’s stomach plummets. This is it: Patrick’s not okay with it, he’s done, he’s tired of Jonny being so needy. Jonny wonders if he can do something stupid, like beg or plead. Instead he clears his throat and says, “It’s, uh, it’s not? What’s wrong?”

“Stan talked to me yesterday.” Patrick kicks his heels against the side of the bed he’s sitting on, and then he sighs and looks up at Jonny. “It looks like the cancer is back.”

Everything Jonny was thinking goes straight out of his head. He sinks down onto his bed. “It is? How bad?”

Patrick looks away. “They don’t know. But they’ve already been through so much crap this year, and the kids—”

He brushes the heel of his hand angrily against his eye. Jonny’s stomach twists in a different way. He doesn’t usually think of Patrick as small, but he looks small now: hunched over and sad and still skinnier than the trainers want him to be, blinking his eyes against tears he doesn’t want Jonny to see. Jonny wants—

He doesn’t let himself think about it much before he’s sliding across from one bed to the other, sitting next to Patrick and putting his arms around him. Patrick goes with it right away, leaning into him and putting his head on Jonny’s shoulder.

“It’s just so hard to watch them go through that,” Patrick says into the collar of Jonny’s shirt. “It’s like, I’m sort of a part of it but I’m sort of not, and then I feel guilty because it’s not my family that’s going through it, and I want to help but there’s nothing I can do to fix it.”

Jonny tightens his arms a little bit. He’s never done this, comforted someone through touch, but he feels like he knows how to do it. Like there’s an instinct long-suppressed that’s now waking up. “I’m sure they’re glad just to have you there,” Jonny says. “You’re good with the kids.” He is: Jonny’s seen him with them at barbecues, playing toss and rolling around with them on the ground.

“Yeah.” Patrick’s voice is muffled. “But I’m not solving their problems, you know?”

Jonny can feel the dampness of Patrick’s tears through his shirt. He hesitates, and then puts a hand to Patrick’s face. Brushes the teardrops from the soft skin under his eyes.

Patrick lets out a shuddery breath and clenches his hand tighter in Jonny’s shirt. Jonny slides his hand up to Patrick’s hair and strokes it a little, the way Patrick always likes, plays with the strands that are so much finer than Jonny’s own. Presses his nose against the top of Patrick’s head and feels Patrick’s breath start to even out.

When they finally get ready for their nap, Jonny forgets to be anxious about whether they’re sleeping in one bed or two. He climbs in automatically with Patrick, and Patrick rolls toward him and buries his face in Jonny’s chest. Jonny settles his arms around him and strokes slowly, up and down Patrick’s back, until he falls asleep.

Jonny’s tired, too; of course he is. But he lies awake for a little bit after Patrick drops off. He feels strange: like something inside him is pouring out into Patrick. It makes him feel larger inside, and powerful, and a little bit tremulous, like he’s perched on top of something high and could topple any moment. He doesn’t quite know what to do with the feeling, so he just holds onto Patrick tight and waits for sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

His rookie year is looking up—they’re even starting to win again—so of course that’s when Jonny goes down, knee twisting the wrong way on the Kings’ ice.

Fucking four to six weeks. Fucking PT. Jonny’s always hated it: the physical therapists hover, obviously wanting to touch him, hands fluttering like he’s doing it wrong and they’re dying to jump in. And sometimes he is doing it wrong, because there are some things you just can’t do for yourself, but it’s not like he can do anything about it. He can’t make them be able to touch him.

He gets sent home from the road trip, and he’s grumpy for the whole rest of the time the team is gone—because his knee hurts, because he has to watch the team lose three games in a row, because he’s basically trapped on his couch and can’t even go for a run. Not because he misses touching Patrick. It’s only been like three days. He can survive three days without being touched.

But he can’t deny that he’s relieved when the Hawks finally come back and Patrick lets himself into Jonny’s apartment and sprawls next to Jonny on the couch. “Ugh, those games fucking sucked,” he says.

“I know,” Jonny says. “I was watching.”

“Rude,” Patrick says. His head is down by Jonny’s good knee, and Jonny thinks about touching it, running his fingers through the curls. He’s just raising his hand to do so when Patrick sits up again. “Wanna watch something?” he asks Jonny.

“Oh. Yeah,” Jonny says.

They end up at one end of the couch with Jonny’s back against Patrick’s chest, so that Jonny can stretch his knee out. It’s nice, having Patrick’s arms around him, but Jonny feels antsy: probably just because he’s been sitting on this couch for so long. Instead of soothing him like it usually does, Patrick’s touch seems to be charging him up. He keeps shifting around, trying to get more comfortable, until finally Patrick says: “What the fuck are you doing, some kind of awkward shoulder dance?”

“No.” Jonny stops moving. “Shut up.”

“Ooh, good one.” Patrick jabs him in the shoulder a little. “Okay, sit on the floor. I’m going to give you a massage.”

“I don’t need a massage, Pat.”

“You’ve never had one before, right?” Patrick asks.

“So?” There are plenty of things Jonny hasn’t done and never will do; he doesn’t need to start making a list. “That doesn’t mean I’m, like, deprived.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m so sorry that I’m inflicting the cruelty of a massage on you.” Patrick puts a pillow on the floor. “I’m a terrible person. Now sit.”

Jonny rolls his eyes but slides down onto the pillow and puts another one under his knee. “Shouldn’t I be on a table or something?”

“This is how my sisters and I used to do it,” Patrick says.

Now that’s a picture: little child Patrick and his three sisters climbing around on a couch, poking each other in the back and pretending it’s a massage. Jonny’s distracted enough, thinking of the tiny clambering Kanes, that it’s a surprise when Patrick’s hands land on his shoulders.

It’s softer than Jonny would have expected: just smooth strokes over the top of his shoulders through his t-shirt. “I think, uh, it’s supposed to be harder than that?” he says, because he’s watched massage videos before. When he was fourteen, he went through a phase of watching this old VHS tape his parents had of someone giving massage instruction. He would watch and try to imagine what the hands would feel like on his body, for hours.

“Patience,” Patrick says. “I’m working up to it.” His fingertips tap on the muscles on top of Jonny’s shoulders, and it’s still not a hard touch, but it makes tingles travel down Jonny’s back.

There’s some crime show on TV. Jonny half-watches it as Patrick’s hands do their little gliding-and-tapping routine all over his back. Then his hands go back up to Jonny’s shoulders, and his thumbs dig in, and—

“Whoa,” Jonny says.

“Holy hell, you’re tight,” Patrick says. “Have you had these knots since, like, grade school?”

Jonny doesn’t answer, because Patrick’s left thumb is pressing down on this little kernel of pain in his shoulder, and he’s trying to contain the feeling. He’s no stranger to pain, even pain from other people hurting him: huge hockey-player bodies slam into him on the ice practically every day. But this feels totally different. Patrick’s thumb rolls around in a slow circle, and Jonny can feel the pain rocketing through different parts of his body: gut, legs, jaw, little isolated pulses of pain like the knot in his shoulder is connected to everything else. It hurts, but it’s a good hurt, like stretching a sore muscle but all over his body, and it’s almost too much to handle.

“You have to breathe through it,” Patrick says low, in his ear. Jonny sucks in a deep breath, and Patrick moves his thumb to another knot, and when Jonny breathes in again there’s a little sound on the breath.

It goes on for what feels like a long time: Jonny sitting on the pillow and not watching whatever’s on TV, because he’s too busy feeling Patrick’s big warm hands push and squeeze and coax the pain out of his body. When he’s done, Jonny feels like he’s been wrung out, like maybe he’s recovering from a bag skate. Patrick switches to running his fingernails over Jonny’s skin, light trails of shivery goodness that leave Jonny blissed out and struggling to stay upright.

Patrick leans forward and rests his chin on top of Jonny’s head. “It usually wasn’t that intense, when my sisters and I did it,” he says. “Your back is a piece of work.”

“Mm,” Jonny says. It’s all the speech he’s capable of right now. Patrick is only touching him in a few places—his chin on Jonny’s head, his hands resting on Jonny’s shoulders—but Jonny feels wrapped up, contained. Warm.

They sit like that for a few minutes, Jonny lolling against Patrick’s knee a little bit. It occurs to him that Patrick must be getting stiff from leaning over like that, but he can’t bring himself to break the spell. It’s like he’s floating on a warm and happy sea. He can feel the blood coursing in his back, and everything feels better than it has in days. Maybe a lot longer.

“Hey,” Patrick says after a bit. He takes his hand off Jonny’s shoulder and puts it on Jonny’s head, fingers tapping lightly against Jonny’s hair. “Want to learn how to give one?”

Jonny thinks about his hands on Patrick’s back, manipulating the muscles. Making Patrick feel like Jonny does right now. “Yes,” he says.

***

The month of January is so long. The Hawks go on a lot of road trips, which Jonny would normally enjoy, but now they just mean he’s alone in his apartment, watching games from the couch with no teammates to cheer him up.

His mom offers to come visit him, or to have him come up to Winnipeg for a couple of weeks. But he needs to be here for PT, and he insists that he doesn’t need his mom to come down to Chicago and sleep on his couch or spend money for a hotel room when he’s fine. The more important reason, the one he can’t quite articulate even to himself, is that he doesn’t want to have to do without Patrick’s touches for the time he’d be in Winnipeg, and he’s not sure Patrick would still give them if his mom were next to them on the couch. He might feel weird about it, or not want to come over at all anymore. And Jonny really doesn’t want to open himself up to his mom’s questions when he knows there’s no good explanation for how any of this is possible.

He does go to the UC for games when the Hawks are in town. He hobbles up to the press box and then down to the locker room after games, even though it means having to wear lots of layers and plaster a pleasant expression on his face and answer reporters’ questions.

The reporters seem to have gotten a little bolder in asking about his “condition.” It’s been too long since the press office yelled at them, maybe. Jonny doesn’t know why anyone would even want to write about—it doesn’t change, so where’s the story?—but somehow it seems to be a topic of endless fascination for the reporters.

The injury has given them new ammunition. “How has your PT been going, given your limitations?” one of the reporters asks him a week or two into it.

Jonny ignores the stress on _limitations._ “It’s always tough to come back from an injury, but you just learn early on to give yourself the time you need,” he says. “My priority is getting up to a hundred percent so I can be back on the ice.”

“But it must make diagnosis difficult,” she says.

“We’ve got a great team of doctors here,” he says, and then he looks at her as blandly as possible until she gets the picture.

Worse are the questions he overhears them asking his teammates, though. “Do you think the opposing teams are hitting you harder now that Toews isn’t on the ice?” someone asks Sharpy during a post-game interview after game six of their losing streak.

Jonny’s head snaps up, and then he pretends to be very busy looking elsewhere so that it doesn’t seem like he’s paying attention to Sharpy’s answer. He shouldn’t have been worried, though: Sharpy knows how to handle this kind of thing. “He does draw a certain amount of fire away from everyone else,” Sharpy says. “You know, since he’s such a strong player.”

The guy looks disappointed. “So…you’re looking forward to playing with him again.”

Jonny would have answered that with anger. But Sharpy puts on a sleazy smile. “We’re pining,” he says with a wink at Jonny, and Duncs snorts with laughter.

Jonny corners Patrick before he leaves the locker room. “Hey, go hug Sharpy for me,” he says in an undertone.

Patrick looks surprised, but he doesn’t ask. “Like I need an excuse,” he says, and launches himself across the room at Sharpy. “Tazer said to give you this,” he says as he gloms on.

Sharpy staggers a little under the assault. “Aw, Tazer, you shouldn’t have. How did you know I wanted a Peekaboo of my very own?”

“Keep him; he’s not house-trained,” Jonny calls back.

Patrick kicks him for that later, in private. They’re curled up on Jonny’s couch, and Jonny thinks about escalating it and kicking Patrick back, maybe knocking him onto the floor, but he’s so comfortable and sleepy and Patrick’s all soft and warm along his front, and so he lets it go.

***

Patrick must have been paying some attention to the reporters’ questions, though, because he asks the next day, “Hey, _do_ you need help with PT?”

Jonny stiffens. He’s been defending himself against anxious physical therapists his whole life: he hates it, because even if him doing everything himself isn’t perfect, what else do they want from him? For him to get rid of his weird touch thing so they can do their jobs more easily? If he could, he’d have done it way sooner and for way better reasons. “I’ve been doing this for years, okay?”

“Yeah.” Patrick gets up from the couch and starts poking at Jonny’s DVDs. “It’s just, you’ve never had anyone around like me before, so…”

He sounds really hesitant. Okay, so Jonny probably shouldn’t have snapped at him like that. “Sorry,” he says. And then, because he wants Patrick to know he really is sorry: “I guess maybe there are a couple of stretches you could help me with.”

It’s amazing, how different it is having someone else manipulate his leg. Jonny’s nervous at first, because he always knows how he’s affecting himself—whether he’s doing something that hurts or pulls too much or anything like that—and what if Patrick does something wrong? But Patrick is slow and careful with him, and his hands are strong and steady and can come at him from angles that Jonny’s own can’t. It’s peaceful, actually: sitting there as the muscles in his leg stretch, contract, stretch under Patrick’s full, quiet attention. Jonny finds that he likes it.

The part he doesn’t like is at the end of the night where Patrick goes back to the Bowmans’. They’ve always slept apart when they’ve been at home before, but now Jonny’s not going on road trips, and that means no nights in the same bed at all. Jonny tells himself that it’s fine, that he doesn’t need it, but he’s having trouble sleeping in general due to his lack of physical activity, and there are a lot of nights where he lies awake in his bed and wishes he weren’t alone.

It wouldn’t be fair to ask, though. Not when the Bowmans are going through so much crap with Stan’s cancer, and Patrick probably wants to go back to be with them. Jonny doesn’t own his time.

It’s tempting, though, when Patrick’s fresh back from the game in Nashville and he’s curled up sleepily on the end of Jonny’s couch. Jonny thinks about leaning against him and just letting it happen: falling asleep and then having plausible deniability in the morning—oops, didn’t mean to fall asleep. He thinks about having Patrick in his arms all night.

But that wouldn’t be fair to Patrick, to try to trick him into doing something he didn’t mean to. Jonny imagines waking with Patrick’s face so close to him, skin sleep-warm, and trying to pretend he didn’t mean to—and he pulls his feet away from where they’re tangled with Patrick’s.

Patrick wakes up a little, blinking out of a half-doze. “What time is it?”

“Late. You should probably get home,” Jonny says. Patrick uncurls a little, hair crushed on one side by the pillow, and Jonny can’t help it, blurts out: “Unless you want to stay?”

Patrick pauses in his uncurling. “Really?”

“I mean, only if you want.” Jonny runs his hands over his thighs. “You don’t have to, obviously.”

“Yes,” Patrick says. “Sure.”

Jonny feels buoyant as they go down the hall: to his bedroom, where he gets to stretch out on a bed with Patrick next to him, nothing but boxers and t-shirts between them, the two of them pressed close and breathing slow and in sync until sleep overtakes them. His knee aches, and his team is losing like nobody’s business, but right now there isn’t a thing in the world he feels like he could possibly wish for.

***

It’s strange that it happens for the first time when Patrick’s not even touching him.

Or maybe it’s not so strange—Jonny hasn’t been jerking off that much the past couple of months, and it’s been weirding him out a little, but now he thinks maybe his body was just saving it up for maximum awkwardness potential.

He’s in the locker room. It’s his first practice back, and he might have gotten a little overenthusiastic, because he’s technically about thirty minutes early. It means he gets to see everyone as they come in and accept their congratulatory pats on the back—Sharpy in particular has gotten creative about what objects he uses on Jonny when contact is in order, and today it’s a nerf gun, which Duncs steals and starts using for target practice on Seabs.

Patrick trails in halfway through the crowd, swats at Jonny with his coat, and goes across the room to change. He pulls his shirt over his head before he puts on his Under Armour, and Jonny thinks, _I was lying against that chest last night._

It hits him with an aching jolt to the groin: arousal, hot and surprisingly strong. He feels sweat prick under his pads, and his cock is filling in his jock before he can even think about trying to distract himself.

It doesn’t even make sense. He’s seen Patrick’s chest hundreds of times by now, probably; there’s no reason that his eyes should be fixed on the curve of his pecs and that it should be making his brain go all fuzzy.

He’s not even gay.

Then he thinks, in the next breath (breath that sizzles in his stomach; how can he be so turned on in a _locker room_ ), that how would he know, really? He’s never really pictured himself with anyone. It’s always felt unrealistic enough to throw him out of the fantasy. When he jerks off, he thinks of other people together—men and women fucking, panting and gasping and turned on and focused on each other. So maybe—maybe he is attracted to men.

Although it’s more likely that he’s just confused. With everything Patrick’s been giving to him, the way they’ve been snuggling up to each other—it makes sense that his body would cross the signals. That it would start thinking about Patrick alongside the idea of sex.

He can push it aside. This doesn’t have to be a big deal.

“Hey, Tazer, you okay? Not nervous about practice, are you?” Buff calls out.

“Fuck off, I’ll show you nervous,” Jonny says, and when he looks back at Patrick his pads are on and Jonny can’t see anything but his bright eyes and the dimpled smile he shoots at him.

***

It makes everything so much worse.

Before, Jonny could curl up next to Patrick and think—well, not that they were getting the same thing out of this, but that at least that Patrick knew what he was giving. That Jonny was touch-deprived and lacking for choice and needed what Patrick could give him. Which was touch. Not sex.

Sex isn’t supposed to be on the table. And so Jonny feels guilty about every thrill that runs down his spine to his groin, every brush of skin that makes him pant a little.

“Are you okay?” Patrick asks, curled up against Jonny’s back in their hotel room in San Jose. “You’re all tense.”

“Yeah,” Jonny says. “Just, you know, first game back.”

“Mm,” Patrick says, and runs his nose back and forth against the back of Jonny’s neck. Jonny bites his lip against the gasp that wants to escape and the shivers that spread all through his belly.

What is _wrong_ with him?

It’s worse when they end in a position where Jonny’s groin is pressed up against Patrick, and then he has to try to subtly adjust important parts of him so they aren’t touching anything anymore. If he doesn’t, he learns very quickly, Patrick will eventually do something that will make the blood pool hot in his cock and then he’ll be screwed. He doesn’t think Patrick’s noticed anything yet, but it’s just a matter of time.

And then there’s the jealousy. Jonny still goes out with the team when he can—which is to say, not all that often, but occasionally when someone’s been able to scout the location ahead of time and knows they’ll have enough space and a booth where Jonny can be out of harm’s way. Even then it’s not perfect—there’s an incident where someone in Minnesota brushes the top of his head as she gets out of the booth behind them—but it’s usually fine, and Sharpy doesn’t let him lock himself away “just because some random woman got careless with her hands one time, jeez, Tazer.”

It’s better when he does lock himself away, though, because then he doesn’t have to see Patrick flirt with people. Jonny knows that whatever he’s feeling is probably just a weird twisted lust thing, but that doesn’t mean he likes watching Patrick lean over girls in bars and grin at them—that grin, the one that makes his dimples pop so that Jonny wants to trace his fingers over them—and touch them on the arm, the way he touches Jonny.

“Okay,” Sharpy says in a bar in Columbus, “I know you can’t actually get up and talk to anyone, but that’s no reason to cockblock people with the power of your mind.”

Jonny snaps his head around to look at him. “Huh?”

Sharpy tilts his head back toward the bar, where, yes, Jonny was watching Patrick chat up this girl in a tube top. “Jealous?”

Oh fuck. _Fuck._ “Of course not,” Jonny says, but Sharpy’s eyes have gone all soft and understanding.

“I know it can’t be easy,” he says.

The sincerity of the words makes Jonny flush. He feels broken open; he wanted so badly to keep his thing for Patrick a secret until he could make it go away. “It’s not, you know, it’s not a thing,” he mumbles.

“Sure,” Sharpy says, like he doesn’t believe it for a second. “Still, can’t be easy to watch your teammates do something you can’t.”

That makes Jonny stop and frown for a moment, because—oh. Oh, _that’s_ what Sharpy’s talking about. He doesn’t know about the thing with Patrick at all.

“Right,” he says, trying to curb the relief in his voice. “Yeah, obviously it sucks.”

“Hang in there, tiger,” Sharpy says, and then Jonny doesn’t have to feign the scornful glance he gives him, because, really? _Hang in there, tiger?_

Anyway, that’s what he’s trying to do.

It helps that Patrick never seems to hook up with anyone on the road. Jonny figures it’s because he doesn’t have anywhere to bring them except for their shared hotel room, and he feels guilty about that, but it’s hard not to feel a little bit happy as well. On those nights when he knows Patrick could have picked up, he tries not to hold Patrick too close when they climb into bed together, aware that he isn’t the person Patrick wanted to end the evening with. But Patrick usually snuggles just as close regardless, so Jonny resigns himself to an armful of sleepy Patrick and to almost, almost, getting what he wants.

Well—what his stupid, confused body has decided it really wants, anyway. He’s still trying to talk it out of it.

***

They’re in L.A. the night Patrick brings it up. They’ve just beaten the Kings six to five, a brutal game, and they have another game in Anaheim tomorrow. Everyone’s exhausted, but the high from the win is good enough that Sharpy convinces them to have a beer near the hotel.

Jonny goes along. He’s not sure he wants to, but Patrick’s going, and he is sure that he doesn’t want to sit alone in the hotel room when Patrick’s out. Even if it means having to watch Patrick hit on random girls all night.

Patrick doesn’t end up doing that, though. He sits in the booth with Jonny for the whole time it takes him to drink the beer Sharpy snuck him, and he teases Jonny about the penalty he got in the second period, and Jonny tries not to watch his mouth on the pint glass.

He wants to get this stupid fluttering out of his stomach. Patrick shouldn’t be able to do this to him. Just by smirking and making eye contact and having eyes that are so bright, and God, why can’t Jonny just deal?

They go back to the hotel room, Jonny resisting the temptation to brush up against Patrick the whole way, and Jonny’s digging his sleep clothes out of his suitcase when Patrick says, “You’ve never been kissed, right?”

Jonny drops the shirt he was holding. His heart skips a beat and then starts beating twice as fast. “Is that a question?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Patrick shrug. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, the one farthest from the door where they’re both going to sleep. “I guess, yeah.”

Jonny gets it together enough to glare, even if he can’t quite bring himself look at Patrick directly. “No, Patrick, I’ve never tortured someone by getting her to kiss me.”

“Right,” Patrick says. Jonny can’t read his tone of voice, maybe couldn’t even if he weren’t distracted by how hard his heart is beating. “Well, I was wondering—do you want to try?”

Jonny jerks a little. He sort of saw this coming—that’s why his heart has been beating so hard—but it’s different hearing Patrick say it out loud. He swallows, mouth and throat suddenly dry. “Are you…”

“Nothing gay!” Patrick says quickly. “Just, you know, since you might never have another chance. With anyone else, I mean.”

Jonny makes himself look at him. Patrick’s cheeks are pink, a light flush along the lines of his cheekbones, and he’s biting his lower lip. Jonny’s stomach does a slow flip.

“I just thought, you know…” Patrick says.

“Okay,” Jonny says.

“Yeah?” Patrick says. He turns sideways on the bed, one leg folded and the other foot on the floor.

The obvious invitation in his body makes Jonny lurch and stumble as he goes towards the bed. He sits down next to Patrick, mirror image, and scoots a little closer so that their knees are almost touching. Then he feels awkward about that, but it’s too late to take it back.

“You, um, want to…now?” Patrick says.

Jonny flinches back a little. “I thought you meant…”

“No, no, I did,” Patrick says. His eyes are on the bedspread.

Okay, then. Jonny twists his fingers together on his knee. “So, how do we…”

Patrick looks up at him, blue eyes piercing. He slips a hand into the back of Jonny’s hair, pulls him closer, and then—then they’re _kissing._

It’s just a brush of lips at first. Patrick’s are chapped, and they catch on Jonny’s and send shivers all over his body. He didn’t think he had that many nerve endings in his lips, but they’re suddenly all lighting up. “Oh,” he says without meaning to, a little punch of breath.

Patrick pulls back a few inches. “Yeah,” he says, eyes heavy-lidded, and then he leans back in and kisses him more firmly, lips warm and wet now against Jonny’s.

Jonny’s stomach is jumping and his arms and legs are kind of tingly and numb. Patrick takes Jonny’s lip between his own and tugs on it a little, and Jonny gasps. It’s so lush, this feeling of Patrick’s mouth pressing against his. He pushes forward a little more without thinking and this time it’s Patrick who makes a noise. His tongue comes forward and licks at the edge of Jonny’s lip.

Oh. Jonny can barely breathe. Patrick’s tongue traces Jonny’s lower lip and then dips inside, soft and wet. Patrick’s tongue, in his mouth. Jonny slides his tongue against it and feels the way it gives against his. Patrick’s tongue curls and licks at the underside of Jonny’s and Jonny can’t hold back the noises in his throat anymore. He’s dizzy, reeling as Patrick angles his head and eats all the little sounds he’s making.

Patrick’s tongue slowly explores all of Jonny’s mouth while Jonny’s breathing picks up and the static in his belly builds and builds. Then Patrick sucks Jonny’s tongue into his mouth and Jonny whines, fingers scrabbling at Patrick’s arms as sensation runs down his skin like a full-body flush. Patrick’s panting as he lets Jonny stroke into his mouth, teeth and tongue and oh, the soft inside of his lip and the little intake of breath Patrick makes when Jonny licks him there. Then there’s more back and forth, everything getting blurry and more desperate and Jonny will never have enough of this, ever ever.

When Patrick breaks it off, they’re both panting. Jonny stares at Patrick’s mouth: his lips are parted, a little swollen, and God, Jonny wants to taste them again. Can feel his pulse thudding in his whole body for how badly he wants it.

“Do you, uh, want first shower?” Patrick asks.

“Huh?” Jonny says, too busy looking at the way Patrick’s lips move when he talks, when he breathes.

“Shower?” Patrick asks again. His breath is still coming fast.

“Oh. N-no,” Jonny says. He doesn’t think he can stand up right now.

“Okay,” Patrick says. He doesn’t get up right away, though—just sits there, color high in his cheeks and spit shiny on his lips and Jonny wonders if maybe, maybe, he can lean back in and—

But then Patrick does get up, off to the bathroom and gone.

Jonny lets out a shaky breath. His cock is straining against his pants, balls heavy and full, everything aching. As soon as hears the bathroom door shut, he fumbles his fly open, and his orgasm is _right there,_ shimmering and ready and seconds away. He strokes himself once, twice, and then he’s spurting into his hand, back arching and vision whiting out and, and, oh, Patrick kissing him—Patrick’s mouth open against his—

It goes on and on, glow consuming Jonny’s body as he feels the phantom of Patrick’s tongue stroking against him. That was—wow.

So that was a kiss.

He’s shaky, even after the cleanup, and his gut is all warm and quivery when he finally staggers into the bathroom for his own shower. He stands under the water and lets the sensation wash over him again and again: Patrick’s mouth soft and open for him, Patrick’s hand in his hair angling his head, the little cut-off sounds in Patrick’s throat. It’s like a little fiery ember buried in his belly that keeps lighting up.

He feels awkward when he gets out of the shower and comes back to find Patrick already in bed. Jonny could climb in next to him—that’s what he would have done yesterday—but it feels like everything’s changed. Jonny’s whole body feels changed.

The part of him that wants to cuddle up to Patrick wins out over the part that feels awkward, though. Jonny slides under the covers, and Patrick doesn’t say anything, doesn’t open his eyes, but he does inch closer. Jonny nestles up against the warmth of his body and buries his face in Patrick’s shower-damp hair and goes to sleep, body still soaring on something new.


	6. Chapter 6

Jonny doesn’t know how to make it happen again. He knows he wants it to, but he can’t even think rationally about it—just the thought of it is enough to make everything stop, the whole world blanking out because _kissing Patrick._ It takes over his whole mind and body and even then he can’t wrap himself around it.

He doesn’t leave the apartment much in the next couple of days, when he can help it. At the rate he’s walking into things, he’d be a menace on the streets.

But he knows, even through the utter failure of all his rational functions, that it might not happen again. It wasn’t a normal first kiss that included the promise of a second one. But it’s hard to hold onto that thought when he’s remembering what it felt like to share Patrick’s air.

They go to Dallas a few days after they get back to California, and Jonny schools himself not to expect anything. He’ll probably get to sleep in the same bed with Patrick, but that’s it. It doesn’t stop his stomach from jumping as soon as they’re in a hotel room alone together, though.

“Nap?” Patrick says, like nothing’s out of the ordinary, and Jonny climbs into bed next to him. Patrick curls into Jonny’s chest, warm and soft and, okay, this is normal.

It’s normal, and Jonny can do this. He’s even starting to get sleepy before Patrick leans his head up and brushes his lips against Jonny’s.

Oh fuck. It’s really—it’s really happening again, and they should nap, Jonny knows, they shouldn’t risk messing up their game, but Patrick’s lips are opening under his and Jonny’s stomach is leaping and there’s no way he’s going to put a stop to this.

The kiss moves faster this time. Patrick licks into Jonny’s mouth like he’s hungry for it, and God, Jonny’s been desperate for nothing else for days. The heat and the taste of Patrick make him feel like a balloon about to burst. His arms and legs are going tingly and floaty because all his blood is rushing to his mouth, to his cock. His lips buzz where they brush against Patrick’s.

Patrick’s teeth close on his lower lip, and it’s such a _sharp_ feeling that Jonny gives a little cry. He tugs on Patrick to get him closer, and Patrick goes, shifts them so that he’s lying on top of Jonny and—and that’s Patrick’s _cock,_ hard and jolting down next to Jonny’s—

Patrick breaks the kiss but doesn’t move away. “There’s some other things you probably haven’t tried,” he says, breath hot steam against Jonny’s ear, and he rolls his hips down against Jonny’s.

“Oh,” Jonny says, “oh, fuck,” and he has his hands on _Patrick’s ass_ and it fills his palms with firm lush muscle that he can push down on and make that wonderful feeling roll over his body again. “I can’t—”

“It’s okay if it’s fast,” Patrick says, and that’s a good thing because Jonny is grinding his cock up against Patrick’s while Patrick is grinding down, the two of them meeting in an explosion of sparks behind Jonny’s eyelids. He kneads his hands over Patrick’s ass while Patrick’s hips rock into his, and then Patrick’s mouth finds his again and he licks in like he’s starving. Jonny jerks his hips up, and up, and up, and Patrick’s gasping into his mouth, and Jonny’s balls are pulling tight against his body, and everything is going golden and melty and Patrick is hot and hard against him and—

_“Patrick,”_ he groans out, and he comes in his pants in a hot sticky rush that leaves him airless and shattered.

“Fuck,” Patrick says in a broken voice. His hips stutter under Jonny’s hands, fast and hard, and then he’s shaking, too, mouth open and eyes fluttering shut as he comes on top of Jonny.

Afterglow. Jonny never really knew what it meant, but now he does, because having Patrick on top of him like this after they’ve both come is the most amazing feeling. The weight of him, the way his muscles are lax and he’s breathing into Jonny’s neck. The little shivers still running up and down Jonny’s skin and the warmth that fills his belly every time he thinks about it, Patrick here, feeling this with him. He never wants to let go.

“We should probably clean up,” Patrick mumbles after a while, and Jonny knows he’s right, but he still doesn’t want to let go. He lets Patrick pull him up, though, and he hovers close while Patrick strips his shirt off. He’s a little on edge, watching to make sure Patrick doesn’t want space—but Patrick just comes right up to him, undoing Jonny’s fly and getting his pants off.

Backwards, taking each other’s clothes off after sex. _Sex._ Jonny just had sex with—

“Shower?” Patrick asks, and Jonny doesn’t like the sound of that, doesn’t want to go into the bathroom alone. But Patrick takes his hand and pulls him along.

They’re both still in their sticky underwear. Jonny looks at the planes of Patrick’s back as they walk. The muscles, shifting under the skin. The curve of his ass where Jonny had his hands just a minute ago.

Patrick stops in front of the shower. “Yeah?” he says, and Jonny nods, not even sure what he’s agreeing to. He’d agree to anything right now. Then Patrick turns on the shower and strips off his boxers and Jonny gets it—gets that Patrick wants him in there with him, wants the two of them naked together and his eyes fix on Patrick’s cock and he can’t move.

“If this isn’t okay,” Patrick starts to say, but that breaks Jonny’s spell and he pulls his own boxers off and stands there naked before Patrick.

Patrick steps into the shower, and Jonny follows. It’s the two of them, naked under the water, like they would be if Jonny showered with everyone else back at the rink. But this is a lot smaller than those showers, and Jonny’s skin never hummed like this when he saw guys walking around naked there. Patrick’s cock is soft between his legs, but Jonny still wants to touch it. Isn’t sure if he’s allowed.

Patrick takes the bar of hotel soap and runs it all over his own chest. Jonny’s eyes follow it hungrily: the slide of that slick soap over the smoothness of Patrick’s skin. Then Patrick sets the soap down, puts his hands on Jonny’s chest, and leans in for a kiss.

Jonny leans down to meet him, and their mouths join sweetly. They kiss like that for a while: water streaming down their faces and between their mouths, warm but cooler than the inside of Patrick’s mouth. Jonny licks the droplets off Patrick’s lips and does what he’s been wanting to: he slides his hand down and wraps it around Patrick’s cock.

Patrick gives a startled cry into their kiss. The skin of his cock is soft to the touch—a lot like Jonny’s own, probably, but Jonny’s given up expecting touching Patrick to feel anything like touching himself. It’s too different, knowing that when he moves his hand here, he’s making Patrick feel things. He’s making the blood rush under Patrick’s skin as his cock firms up in Jonny’s hand.

Patrick is making little _mm_ sounds into their kiss. He gets his hand on Jonny’s cock—already getting hard from the sound and the feel of Patrick—and Jonny groans and snaps his hips forward. He just came hard, a few minutes ago, and it’s like that didn’t even count for how eager he is now.

They work each other like that for a while, foreheads pressed together so that their mouths are free to gasp for air, and then Patrick shifts them closer together so that he can wrap his hand around both their cocks. That’s—Jonny wraps Patrick up in his arms, mouths at the skin below his ear. There are fireworks going up his spine. He runs his hands over the water-slick planes of Patrick’s back and thrusts into his grip and licks at his skin and—and he doesn’t know what makes him want to do it, didn’t know he was thinking about it, but he bites, right where Patrick’s neck meets his shoulder.

Patrick comes with the most glorious sound that zips right into Jonny’s blood and makes his hips buck. He feels the heat of Patrick’s come hitting his skin, hotter than the water from the shower, and he moans and licks up Patrick’s neck and feels himself start to lose it. He lets go with his mouth in Patrick’s hair, with his cock grinding hard in Patrick’s grip, holding onto Patrick for dear life as everything explodes out of him.

They hold each other languidly after, and Jonny can’t quite stop tasting: running his mouth over everything, licking the shower water off Patrick’s skin even as more pours down. Patrick arches his neck into it and makes these little _ah_ sounds that make Jonny slow his lips, spend more time everywhere. Never stop tasting Patrick.

When they eventually get out of the shower, it’s all Jonny can do to stumble after Patrick toward the bed. They sprawl under the covers, and Jonny turns his mouth against Patrick’s shoulder before they fall asleep.

***

They start doing it a lot after that. Jonny thinks at first it might be a road trip thing, but when they get back from Dallas Patrick comes over and sits on his lap on the couch and kisses him, so he figures it’s not.

“Ever had a blow job?” Patrick asks when he breaks the kiss. Jonny just rolls his eyes, because Patrick knows the answer to that, but it’s halfhearted because of the way his blood is jumping under his skin. Patrick grins and slithers down to the floor.

Patrick’s mouth on him…gah. Jonny comes in about sixty seconds.

He figures that’s a good thing, since from everything he’s heard no one likes giving a blowjob, but when he gets his mouth on Patrick a few minutes later he thinks maybe he was wrong. The way Patrick fills his mouth, the way Patrick’s stomach jumps and the little noises he makes whenever Jonny tongues over a sensitive spot…Jonny is hard again by the end of it. He rubs off against Patrick’s leg, and Patrick kisses him through it, and how is this his life? How does he get to do these things?

They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk much during, either. Jonny feels like if he speaks, he might shatter it. But they talk after, when they’re sleepy and lax and lounging around on each other. It’s a different kind of conversation than they used to have before the touching thing started: slower, less guarded, less of a filter between brains and mouths. If there are silences, it’s okay, because Jonny can use them to mouth at Patrick’s skin or run his nails up and down his side. Sometimes he uses them to bite at Patrick’s nipples, and then things get less silent because Patrick is moaning and then the conversation is over.

Jonny doesn’t know what he’s going to do if Patrick ever decides to stop this.

It’s a couple of weeks after they first kissed when Patrick pulls out a bottle of lube. They’re in a hotel room in Edmonton and they’ve just lost in overtime, and they lost the game before that to San Jose, and Jonny is feeling shitty like he always does when he can’t figure out what to do to get themselves to be better. They’re a good team—so many guys on the ice he can trust to get the job done—and they should be doing better than this.

He’s tense when they get back to the room and is trying to keep himself from saying all that to Patrick, because he knows he’s already said it to him at least ten times, including once today. Patrick’s not really talking, either, and Jonny thinks it’s just because he’s down about it, too. But then Patrick goes over to his bag, takes out the bottle of lube, and puts it on the bed in front of Jonny.

Jonny looks at the lube. Then back up to Patrick.

Patrick’s hands are in fists at his sides. “I figured you should know what it’s like to fuck somebody,” he says.

Jonny’s stomach flips over. He never thought about— “Are you sure?” he asks.

Patrick nods, the movement jerky.

Jonny pulls him down and kisses him.

It gets hot and dizzy fast. Just the thought of it, Patrick wanting him inside him like that, makes Jonny go hazy and outside of himself. He gets their clothes off and paws at Patrick like he’s never touched him before, squeezes the globes of his ass and wants but doesn’t quite dare—doesn’t quite—

Patrick reaches around behind him and takes Jonny’s hand and guides it into the crack of his ass.

God. Jonny can feel it, a little pucker under his fingers that flexes and releases as Patrick works himself against Jonny. Jonny presses on it and feels the thrill in his own stomach. Patrick hisses a little, tongue still inside Jonny’s mouth, and it hurts in Jonny’s chest, the idea of Patrick inviting him inside.

“Do you really want,” he murmurs as he presses against Patrick’s hole again.

Patrick gives a cry and bucks his hips against Jonny’s. “More,” he says. “Come on, Jonny.”

Jonny’s hands are shaking when he gropes for the bottle of lube. Patrick’s body is hot on top of his, shifting a little like he’s searching for that pressure on his ass again. It makes it hard to get the cap of the lube off, but when he does get a lubed-up finger down to Patrick’s ass, Patrick sighs a little like it’s a relief and Jonny has to bite his lip.

His finger massages lube into the little round pucker. He knows he wants this, but he still can’t quite believe Patrick does. But Patrick cants into the pressure, and then he whispers, “Inside,” against the skin of Jonny’s neck. His hands are clinging to Jonny, chest and hip.

Jonny pushes the tip of his finger in until it pops past the ring of muscle. Patrick lets out a little sound like the breath’s been punched out of him. Jonny can feel his hole clenching and unclenching around him, Patrick’s walls squeezing him. Squeezing the part of him that’s inside Patrick’s body.

He’s been inside Patrick before—inside his mouth—but this feels different. He’s touching Patrick in this tiny hidden space—he, Jonny, the one who makes people scream just by bumping into them, and Patrick is letting him touch him here. He realizes he’s trembling all over, and he runs his free hand up Patrick’s back and into his hair, more to anchor himself than for anything else.

“You’re doing so good,” Patrick says, and Jonny wants to laugh, because isn’t that his line? “Come on, give it to me, all the way in.”

Jonny pushes slowly, and Patrick arches a little against him, breath harsh as Jonny’s finger bottoms out. He can feel it, the way Patrick’s body is changing around him, accommodating him.

He turns his head and nuzzles his way to Patrick’s mouth, kisses him as he slides his finger in and out. Patrick hisses into the kiss as if Jonny were fucking him already.

Thirty seconds of that and Patrick’s squirming. “Come on, give me more,” he says. He pushes his hips up, driving himself onto Jonny’s finger. “It’s—not enough.”

Jonny pulls his finger out, gets more lube, and lines up two of them to push in. As soon as their tips breach his rim, Patrick curses and drops his head to Jonny’s chest. “Jonny,” he says, and then his tongue works over a patch of skin on Jonny’s collarbone, laving it over and over like he just needs something to do with his mouth while Jonny works in.

His ass is opening around Jonny’s fingers. It’s so tight, but Jonny can feel the way it’s giving. He can see what it’s doing to Patrick: the trembling of his limbs, the way his eyelids are fluttering shut, the laxness of his mouth as he presses it mindlessly to Jonny’s skin.

He scissors his fingers slowly, curls them to feel the stretch of Patrick’s hole, and suddenly Patrick’s head shoots up and his eyes fly open and he says, “Oh!”

“What?” Jonny’s fingers still. “What, are you okay?”

“Oh God, do that again,” Patrick says, shoving himself down on Jonny’s fingers. “Do that—”

“What, this?” Jonny curls his fingers again, and Patrick moans, the sound traveling all the way through Jonny’s bones to the base of his cock.

“Fuck, what even is that,” Patrick groans, and, “No, don’t stop.” Jonny works his fingers over the spot and slides his free hand up Patrick’s chest to thumb at his nipple. He gets the edge of his nail into the peak the way he knows Patrick likes, and Patrick arches into the touch, throwing his head back and crying out. It’s so good that Jonny can’t help himself. He curls up, barely even feeling the burn in his abs, and gets his mouth on the other nipple, the hard little pink nub calling him to just get his tongue and teeth on it and bite down, hard.

Patrick gives this little strangled half-scream and Jonny crooks his fingers inside him again and Patrick says, “No, no, you gotta stop—I’m gonna—”

Jonny lets himself fall back onto the pillow. Patrick hangs over him, panting, and Jonny can see his cock—can see how it’s swollen an angry red, see the precome spilling from the tip. Patrick breathes for a minute and then tumbles down on top of Jonny and kisses him, greedy and sloppy, while Jonny starts working his fingers slowly inside again and grinds his own cock against Patrick’s hip, so turned on he’s practically blind from it.

Patrick starts babbling, like maybe Jonny’s fingers in his ass are the key to unlocking his speech when they do this. “Oh God, you don’t even know—never done this—Jonny. It’s—” Jonny digs his fingers back into that spot that makes him shiver, and Patrick raises his head up from Jonny’s chest, looks at him, lost. “I don’t even know what to do with this.”

“Now you know how I feel,” Jonny says. His voice is full of gravel. “Every—every time you touch me.”

Patrick moans and holds his gaze for a moment, eyes peeling Jonny open, and then he drops his head. “Fuck me,” he says next to Jonny’s ear. “Fuck me, fuck me right now.”

Jonny digs his fingers hard into that spot, the one that makes Patrick go crazy. He doesn’t know, doesn’t know if two fingers is enough, but Patrick is grinding against him and his own cock hurts from how hard it is and he’s not stopping now.

He turns them over, putting Patrick on his back. Maybe he should be on his face, but Patrick clings to him and won’t let himself be turned. Jonny puts a pillow under his hips instead. “Condom,” he says, little bits of sex ed he never thought he’d need filtering into his mind. “Do we have—”

Patrick shakes his head. “Clean,” he says. “Tested,” and, “Never had anyone do this,” and of course Jonny hasn’t either; Patrick is the only one he’s touched like this, the only one he’s fallen apart with. He can’t even imagine doing it with someone else.

“All right, then,” he says, and suddenly the taste of fear is cold in his mouth. “I’ll…”

“Please,” Patrick says on a whine. He lifts his legs over Jonny’s shoulders, and oh, there’s his hole, red and shiny with lube because Jonny was fingering him. It looks so—so small—it clenches and opens a little under his gaze. Jonny looks up and meets Patrick’s eyes.

“Please,” Patrick says again, voice soft and sober this time. The whisper of it gets into Jonny’s guts and breaks them open. He takes his cock in his hand—the only thing he can offer to Patrick in exchange for that wide-open look and the word that broke him—and presses it to Patrick’s hole.

There’s a minute where he doesn’t think it will go in. He thinks, blindly, irrationally, _I’ve failed; it won’t work after all,_ but then something gives and there’s a quick slide and he goes cross-eyed because the head is in, the head is inside Patrick.

Patrick is looking at him, shocked, and Jonny wants to let some of what he’s feeling spill out onto Patrick’s skin: the tight wonder of Patrick’s hole around him, the way it’s making his blood go crazy. “Oh my God, Patrick, you. You feel.” Jonny drops his head and tries to get some control. Patrick’s so tight around him it feels impossible. “Are you okay?”

“What, that all you got?” Patrick says, breathless, and Jonny chokes out a laugh because no, that is not all he’s got. He can still see the shiny lube-covered shaft of his cock emerging from Patrick’s hole, so much more to go. It makes his stomach jerk with lust.

“Do you want it?” he asks. “You want—more?”

“Hell yes,” Patrick says on a moan, so wanton and hungry that Jonny can’t hold back, jerks his hips forward a little.

“Sorry,” he says, stopping to pant. “I’ll go slow—”

“Just go,” Patrick says, clenching around him, and Jonny tries to say, “Greedy,” but it feels _too good_ and he’s pushing in, into the tight furnace of Patrick’s body.

“Jonny. Jonny,” Patrick says. His hands are on Jonny’s arms, and he’s pulling him down for a kiss. Jonny can practically feel the stretch in his own hamstrings, what this must be doing to Patrick, but Patrick’s hands are insistent. His mouth is sharp and sweet when he gets it on Jonny’s, and then Jonny shifts inside him a little and Patrick lets go of the kiss, his eyelids fluttering and his mouth dropping open helplessly. “Jonny, you’ve got to move. I need—”

Jonny pulls out and thrusts a little, and everything goes so many colors. He feels like the world is shattering, a picture in a kaleidescope, and all the pictures are Patrick’s open mouth and glazed eyes. Patrick gets his hand on his own cock and starts pulling, and that does things—tugs on muscles that are around Jonny, so that Jonny can feel him jerking off, feels like Patrick is jerking them both off. Patrick’s abs are contracting and his breath is heaving and Jonny can’t stop thrusting into him.

The slide of it—the slick heat—Jonny might have gone his whole life without having had this, and it scares him suddenly. “I didn’t know,” he hears himself saying. “Patrick, I didn’t know.”

“Me neither,” Patrick says. His free hand finds Jonny’s, tangles with it even while Jonny’s using it to brace himself, and Jonny holds on tight and pounds in harder. He finds an angle that makes Patrick’s gasps speed up—gives them an edge of sound—and he holds onto that, grinds his cock against Patrick’s walls, tries to give him as much as he can even while he’s being pulled under by the pleasure of it. His eyes snap up to Patrick’s, and what he sees there—Patrick’s staring straight back at him, looking stricken and amazed and so, so lost, and that’s it, Jonny feels everything start to tumble out of him, even while Patrick says, “Oh, _oh,_ ” and goes hazy-eyed and there’s come shooting onto Jonny’s belly. The hot spatter is enough to pull him straight over the edge, and he groans and seizes up and feels his cock pumping Patrick full, feels sparks shooting from his fingers and toes and cock and everything is bright and light and _Patrick._

He falls down a little, arms boneless, and then his cock pops out and Patrick gives a little gasp and Jonny takes him in his arms, presses kisses to his face. His skin tastes like salt, and his mouth tastes like Patrick, and they latch on and suck at each other’s mouths urgently. It’s not the urgency of arousal this time, just a word pounding through Jonny’s blood: _You. You. You._ It makes him cling to Patrick hard until their heartbeats calm and their breathing finally evens out and their kisses slow into sleepiness.

He clings even then. Patrick turns his head against Jonny’s shoulder, and they’re gross and covered in come and should probably shower, but Jonny doesn’t care. He holds on. He holds on.


	7. Chapter 7

Jonny feels dazed the next day. He can barely look at Patrick without feeling his face go funny, and when Patrick pins him against the door and kisses him before they can leave the room to get on their flight, he never wants to stop.

He has to, though: has to go out into the real world where he’s not allowed to touch Patrick. Not allowed to touch anyone. He’s used to it—has never known anything else, really—but it doesn’t usually feel wrong like it does today. He feels torn open, like if he bumped into anyone he’d be the one to scream. Like the absence of Patrick at his side is a physical pain.

It’s one he’ll have to get used to. This isn’t—Jonny’s always known what this isn’t. They’re not dating. They’re not even fuckbuddies, not really. Fuckbuddies implies equal benefit, and yeah, Patrick seems to be enjoying what they’re doing, but it’s always been for Jonny. Jonny’s under no illusions that Patrick would keep coming to him if he thought Jonny could get it anywhere else.

So Jonny…maybe needs to take a break. Get his head back on straight. Remember what this is supposed to be. Back off—not all the way, he doesn’t want to do that, but enough so that he can still have this without it being painful.

The trip home seems like a good time to start. He always feels lonely on airplanes: cut off from everyone, tall seats and engine sounds isolating him and the chair next to his empty. It used to be a bit of a relief, knowing he wouldn’t be hurting anyone while they were up here. Now it just feels like a wrench to sit down and watch Patrick go somewhere else.

But it’s a good time to practice being alone again. Jonny buries his hands under his elbows and turns his head toward the window as the rest of the team boards around him.

“Anyone sitting here?”

Jonny whips his head back around. Patrick’s standing in the aisle, cheeky grin on his face, coat bundled in his arms. “What the hell…?”

“I mean, I don’t want to assume. You might have a hot date sitting here for all I know,” Patrick says as he climbs in.

“You can’t—” Jonny looks around the cabin, but no one’s paying attention to them. “You can’t do this. Someone will see.”

“Trust me. I’ve got it covered.” Patrick starts piling up jackets around the arm rest between them—several of them, not just his own. He must have borrowed some.

“What are you…”

“Barrier.” Patrick pats the top of it. “See? Now you don’t have to worry about touching me.” He winks, and Jonny stares.

People are starting to notice, now. “Um, Kaner,” Duncs says, leaning up over the seat in front of him. “Are you sure you want to…”

“We’re good,” Patrick says. He elbows the barrier. “Nothing’s getting at me through this.”

Duncs scrunches his eyebrows, and Jonny can see him wondering why Patrick would want to take the risk. What about Jonny could be worth it. “Well, as long as you’re being safe.”

Nothing about this is safe for Jonny. Not in the slightest.

“’Course,” Patrick says, careless.

Duncs sits down again, and there’s a tap on Jonny’s thigh. He looks down to see Patrick’s hand wiggling at him from under the barrier, palm up, like he’s asking for something. Jonny hesitates for a moment and then reaches down.

Patrick’s hand closes around his right away, and he beams at Jonny like he’s done something really right. Then they’re just holding hands under the ridiculous barrier of coats. Patrick starts sniping at Jonny about his shift changes, and Jonny snipes right back, and through it all, Patrick’s palm is warm on Jonny’s, his fingers holding tight.

Well. He can start the process of giving himself space from Patrick after they get off the plane.

***

He doesn’t do that great a job at it. It would be easier if there were any actual space, but Patrick keeps inviting himself over, and given the choice of burying himself in Patrick or being alone, it’s impossible for Jonny not to choose the first one.

Each time Patrick leaves, though, it hurts more, and Jonny spends hours trying to figure out whether he’s given anything away, whether Patrick’s guessed yet that this is so much more than convenient touch to him. What will happen when he does. Jonny used to be good at living without touch, without Patrick, but he’s not sure he knows how anymore. He feels like Patrick’s stepped into his life and remade it into something that can’t go on without him there. Every once in a while Jonny stops and tries to imagine it—life after Patrick—and he can’t breathe for a minute at the thought.

Seabs is the one who calls him on something being off. Jonny’s always liked Seabs: he’s got a level head, and he’s fun to talk to without the edge of mockery Sharpy brings to the table. They’re out in Nashville when he brings it up—Jonny tucked into the corner of a booth like always and Patrick up getting waters for the table, except that what he’s actually doing is talking to the cute redhead at the bar.

It’s okay. Patrick’s allowed. Whatever he’s doing for Jonny doesn’t mean he can’t hook up with other people. In fact, it would probably be better if he did, so that Jonny could get used to this feeling. The feeling of watching Patrick across the room, flirting with someone who isn’t him.

“So, you’re having a pretty good rookie season,” Seabs says from across the table.

Jonny yanks his eyes back. “Um, yeah. I guess it’s going pretty well.” And it is, even with his knee injury. Even with the team not going to playoffs. He knows he can be proud of what he and the team have done this year.

“So why do you look like someone just told you you’re being traded?” Seabs asks.

Jonny’s eyes leap over to Patrick again. He can’t help it. Just last night he was buried deep in Patrick’s ass, Patrick making these amazing mewling sounds under him, and Jonny got him to come twice before he gave it up himself, spilling into Patrick’s ass until Patrick was full and dripping. Then—then he ate it out of him, licking at the tender skin of Patrick’s hole while Patrick gasped and writhed and buried his hands in Jonny’s hair and came _again_. It makes his cheeks flush just to think about it, and across the room Patrick tips his head back to laugh at something the redheaded girl says.

He looks back at the table and finds Seabs looking at him knowingly.

“It’s not—” Jonny starts to say, and then he isn’t even sure what he’s denying.

“Isn’t it?” Seabs asks.

Jonny can’t even answer that, afraid of the noise that might come out if he opens his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Seabs says in a low voice. He doesn’t even know the situation, but he obviously knows how hopeless it is.

Jonny nods fast, glad the bar is too dark for anyone to see the wetness in his eyes.

Patrick comes back to the table a few minutes later. “What’d I miss?” he says with a bright smile for Jonny, and Jonny takes the smile into his heart and feels it hurt, feels it break it apart.

***

He says to Patrick when they get back to their room that night: “You know, you could have gone with her.”

Patrick is across the room, in the middle of unbuttoning his shirt. He looks up. “What? Who?”

“Don’t be dumb,” Jonny says. He rehearsed this all the way up here, but he can still feel the flutter of his pulse in his throat. “The girl at the bar.”

“I’m not being dumb.” Patrick frowns. “The girl at the bar? Why would I want to go with her?”

“Okay, maybe not her, but, you know.” Jonny wipes his hands on his thighs. He needs to say this. It’s important, even if it’s making him feel sick. “Someone.”

“Someone.” Patrick stops even trying to unbutton his shirt. “What the fuck, Jonny, what are you talking about?”

Jonny swallows. “I don’t want you to feel—”

“Don’t tell me how to _feel,”_ Patrick says. He’s looking at Jonny in disbelief. “What are you saying? Go with her like—for _sex?”_

Jonny shrugs. The word revolves sickeningly in his stomach. “I know it’s not—” His throat closes on the words. He has to do this. Before he gets in so deep that he’ll never be able to give it up, ever. “Look, I’m not an idiot, okay? I know it’s not the same. For you as for me.”

Patrick gets very quiet. When he speaks, his voice is low. “What do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean.” Jonny clenches his hands around his thighs. Damn, damn, damn Patrick for making him spell this out. “We’re obviously not in the same position here. You’re—look, you’ve been amazing. Doing this for me. But I know that for you it’s not…I mean, I literally can’t be with anyone else but you, but that doesn’t mean that you—that you have to—”

“Okay,” Patrick says quickly. “Okay. I get it.”

Jonny pauses, off-kilter. “You do?” he asks. “Because—”

“No, I definitely get it,” Patrick says. He’s standing stiffly by the other bed, shirt still half-buttoned, not meeting Jonny’s eyes.

“Good,” Jonny says, though he’s not sure it is. There’s an awkwardness between them like there hasn’t been since Jonny first discovered they could touch. And that was different: charged with anticipation, not like the painful stretch between them now. He feels like he should say something more, but he doesn’t know what.

“So,” he says finally, after the silence has dragged on for a while. “I don’t know if you wanted—”

“I think I might, um, head out, actually,” Patrick says.

“Oh,” Jonny says. His stomach does something awful and twisty. Patrick’s going to head out because Jonny just said—Jonny just told him to— “Yeah, if that’s what you want to do.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. He fiddles with the button on his cuff. He’s angled towards the door, but he doesn’t make a move to leave.

Jonny doesn’t know what to do now. He doesn’t want Patrick to leave, but if he’s going to, he wants him to do it right now, because he feels like every moment they stand like this stretches him closer to breaking. “Are you…”

“Yeah,” Patrick says quickly. He springs to life, heads for the door. Doesn’t look at Jonny. “Yeah.”

The door clicks shut behind him, and Jonny sits there, hugging his knees to his chest.

***

Patrick doesn’t come back that night. Jonny didn’t really expect him to. He told Patrick to go out and hook up. It’s ridiculous to be upset, or hurt, or whatever, that Patrick did it so soon. That he was obviously waiting for permission to do so.

There’s no reason to be worried, either. Jonny already knew what he had: Patrick’s body, Patrick’s friendship, nothing more than that. Patrick will come back and cuddle up to him again, and it’ll be just like it was before. Well—different, but that’s good, because Jonny won’t have any illusions now. He won’t get confused when he slides his dick into Patrick about whether it’s more than what it is. When Patrick kisses him, soft and sweet, and sighs against his mouth, Jonny will be safe, because he’ll know Patrick did this with some girl a few days ago and that it doesn’t mean anything. It’s better this way.

The sheets of the hotel bed are cold, and nothing Jonny does can make them comfortable. He doesn’t get a lot of sleep that night.

They have their flight back to Chicago that morning. Jonny’s weirdly, stupidly eager to see Patrick, and anxious at the same time, like it’s been days since they saw each other last instead of hours. Patrick being gone last night threw him off—but once Jonny has him next to him, grumbly over hotel breakfast and chirping Sharpy about how much time he spends on his hair, he knows the weird buzzing in his chest will go away.

Patrick’s not at breakfast yet when he gets there. Jonny’s a little worried—maybe Patrick did something really stupid last night, forgot to set his alarm, went off with the wrong people—but a couple of minutes later he comes through the door.

Jonny’s heart rate spikes as soon as he sees him. It’s so dumb: it’s just Patrick, the guy he sees every day of his life, but the relief is so strong he stops eating.

Patrick has dark circles under his eyes, and his curls are a mess. He goes over to the buffet and takes a plate.

Jonny taps his foot under the table and fiddles with the edge of his piece of toast. He just wants Patrick to make eye contact with him; he knows he’ll feel better as soon as that happens. Even better if Patrick sits down across from him. Maybe gives him a smile. Touches their feet together so that Jonny knows—

Patrick doesn’t do any of those things. He takes his plate of eggs and goes to sit with Burish, at the far end of the room.

Okay. That’s not so weird. Patrick has a lot of friends on the team. Jonny would have hoped that Patrick would come sit with him after he left like that last night, but maybe it’s not weird for Patrick like it is for Jonny. Maybe he doesn’t feel the need to reestablish things because for him, nothing was ever off.

They’ll see each other in the room, anyway, when they go up to get their stuff. Jonny goes up early—maybe hoping Patrick will get the hint and follow him, but he’s not quite willing to admit that.

He throws his stuff in his suitcase in about two minutes and then sits and waits. Patrick doesn’t show up, so after a while Jonny starts repacking his suitcase to make it tidier. It’s the kind of thing Patrick always chirps him about, how messy he is with his things, and he imagines Patrick scoffing at him while he does this: _Yeah, sure, pretend to be tidy, you’re not fooling anyone._

His suitcase closes a lot more easily with everything folded. Patrick still isn’t back.

Jonny sits on the bed and jiggles his leg and watches the clock. The bus leaves for the airport in about ten minutes, and Patrick’s things are still spilling out of his bag. Jonny could pack for him, but that feels really intrusive. And he shouldn’t have to, anyway: Patrick knows what time they have to leave.

Five minutes later, Jonny’s starting to get really worried. It’s not like Patrick could still be hanging out with the guys at breakfast: they all have to pack, too. And Patrick isn’t late for things, generally. Jonny dashes off a text to him—just _???_ —and watches to see if the three little dots appear to show Patrick’s responding, but there’s nothing.

Patrick blows through the door about two minutes before they have to go. “Fuck,” he mutters, and starts throwing things into his bag.

“Where were you?” Jonny asks. “It’s, like, two minutes of.”

“I know. Lost track of time.” Patrick pulls off the button-down he was still wearing from last night and grabs a new one.

“Is everything okay?” Jonny asks.

“Yeah. Great.” Patrick’s patting the floor around the bed, looking for anything that got dropped.

“Because—”

“Look, I’m going to be a minute here,” Patrick says. “Will you go down to the bus and tell the guys I’m on my way?”

Jonny pauses. “Sure,” he says. “But—”

“Thanks,” Patrick says.

Jonny gets up. He wants to do something, say something, but it feels all wrong again. If this were yesterday, he’d brush up against Patrick, touch him, maybe kiss him on the neck. He’s not sure that’s allowed right now—but maybe that’s what they need to make things normal again.

He goes towards Patrick, but just as he’s getting near, Patrick drops his bag and goes into the bathroom for his toiletries. “I’ll just be a minute,” he calls back. “See you down there, okay?”

“Okay,” Jonny says, voice half-there, and he takes his own bag and goes down to the bus.

***

The sick feeling in his stomach grows on the way to the airport. Patrick’s on the bus—squeaked on just before it left—but he’s ten rows back, not talking to Jonny. At the airport, Jonny waits for an opening, a time when Patrick’s not surrounded by people and he can talk to him, but it doesn’t come. Patrick stays in the middle of a crowd of teammates, the kind of place Jonny can’t go without endangering people.

It feels deliberate.

Maybe it’s not. Maybe Jonny’s imagining things. But he sits in his chair in the airport lounge and looks down at his shoes.

By the time they get on the plane, he’s past expecting Patrick to sit with him. But it still hurts when he doesn’t: when Jonny sees his blond head a few rows up, sliding into a seat next to Sharpy, and the long minutes of the flight go by without him getting up and coming close. Jonny stares out the window and sits on his hands.

Patrick’s long gone by the time Jonny gets off the plane. Jonny goes home and opens the text that’s been sitting in his outbox for the past two hours, since halfway through the plane ride. He deletes most of it, the _I’m sorry_ and _I feel like you’re mad at me_ and _I’m not sure what’s going on, but_ and just sends, _Can we talk?_

Patrick doesn’t respond.

Jonny tries to distract himself by cleaning the apartment, but his cleaning service just came through, and there’s not much he can do. He goes for a long run instead. He thinks about calling his mom, but he imagines her asking him how he is and knows he won’t be able to answer without letting her know something is wrong.

He’ll see Patrick at skate the next morning, and they’ll figure it out then.

Except that Patrick ignores him again the next morning. Jonny tries to grab him to talk, but every time he comes close, Patrick slips away, into crowded places where Jonny can’t follow.

Jonny doesn’t know what went wrong. Obviously it happened during the conversation they had after the game, but he doesn’t know what he said that would make Patrick ignore him like this. He thought Patrick would go out and hook up, and then he’d come home to Jonny, and it would be normal. A little more painful, a little less dangerous, but normal. Instead he has Patrick going to the other end of the bench and avoiding his eyes during passing drills.

It makes Jonny feel cold, deep in his gut. He has to push twice as hard just to get his arms and legs to move like they normally do.

They beat the Blues that night, and a bunch of people go out. Patrick is going, face bright and engaged and pointedly turned away from Jonny’s as the team leaves.

Jonny doesn’t even think about going with them. He goes home and curls up on his side in bed. He has his phone with him, clutched in his fist in case it buzzes. Around one a.m., he can’t hold back anymore, and he sends off a one-word text: _Please._

He doesn’t get anything back. Eventually, he wraps his arms around himself and falls asleep.

***

There was life before Patrick. There can be life after.

That’s what Jonny tells himself, and it’s true. Of course it’s true. If he’s never gets to touch Patrick again, he won’t die. He went sixteen years without touching anyone, and he can do it again.

Just because Patrick’s skin felt so good against his. Just because Patrick’s voice was deep and sleepy in his ear as they drifted off, curled up together. Just because Patrick’s eyes were fever-bright when Jonny slid into him, because he clutched Jonny’s hand like he was going to break it, because he kissed him like he was starving. That doesn’t mean Jonny can’t live without him.

He’s achy all over the next morning when he goes to practice. Patrick’s there, of course, but if he got Jonny’s text, he doesn’t give any sign of it. He skates away and leaves Jonny sitting alone on the bench and Jonny can’t _do_ this anymore.

He hurries out of his gear after practice and goes to the parking lot, where Patrick’s ridiculous Hummer is parked. He leans against it and waits for Patrick to come out.

Patrick’s alone when he leaves the building. He looks small. His hair is wet, and his shoulders are hunched, and he looks like something Jonny wants to wrap up in a soft cloth and hide away so the world doesn’t hurt him.

He looks up at Jonny as he comes close, and his face goes cold. He stops walking.

Jonny straightens up. He looks at Patrick’s face: closed off, unhappy. “I was hoping we could talk,” he says.

Patrick looks over his shoulder, at the rear windshield. “You’re blocking the car.”

“Sorry,” Jonny says automatically, and moves away from the bumper.

Patrick goes to the driver’s side door and gets in. He goes to shut the door after him, but Jonny dives forward and grabs it before it can close. “Wait!” he says.

Patrick looks at him then. It’s a look Jonny’s seen before: when Patrick’s been in the faceoff circle with someone he really hates, at the end of a dirty game that they’re losing. “Let go of the door.”

“But we have to talk,” Jonny says.

“Let go of the door or I’m pulling out of here anyway,” Patrick says.

Jonny’s mouth falls open. He lets go of the door, and as soon as he does Patrick slams it shut and starts the car. He backs straight up without looking at Jonny, and he turns with a screech and zooms out of there.

Jonny stares after him. Then he takes a step back, hits the side of a car, and slides down to sit, numb, on the cold concrete.


	8. Chapter 8

Out of there. Jonny has to get out of there.

He ends up walking, away from the Ice House parking lot and down the street, past the random businesses and restaurants. It’s dumb, because his car is still in the lot, and because there’s a reason he never does this. He’s not wearing more than a thin coat, and if he bumps into anyone it’ll hurt them. But he needs to do this: needs to walk through all the barriers he normally stays behind, walk until his breath is rasping out and his fists are clenched and he can leave his skin behind him.

He’s in a cul-de-sac when he realizes it’s not going to work. This isn’t a feeling he can walk away from. His body goes tired all of a sudden: they just had a practice, and if walking isn’t normally exhausting, it is when he’s holding every muscle so tight he might snap. He stands there in the cul-de-sac, panting, and then he calls Seabs.

“Do you think I could come over?” he asks.

He’s not sure how much Seabs can glean from his voice, but it must be something, because there’s a pause before Seabs answers. “Sure,” he says. “I was just putting on some lunch. Come over and eat.”

It takes Jonny half an hour to walk back to his car. At one point he has to stop and check his phone with shaking hands because he’s sure he turned the wrong direction. He hasn’t. He just can’t keep anything straight.

He gets to Seabs’, and Sharpy opens the door.

“What the fuck?” Jonny asks. This is—yeah, no, this is definitely Seabs’ place.

Seabs runs up behind Sharpy. “Sorry, sorry, I tried to get rid of him, but—”

“Oh, come on, I couldn’t miss out on this conversation,” Sharpy says. He holds out a bottle. “Gatorade?”

Jonny stares at him. “How—what were you even doing here in the first place?”

“What, a bro can’t go over to another bro’s for lunch?” Sharpy asks. Then, when Jonny gives him a glare, “Fine, okay, I came over to borrow Seabs’ electric drill.”

“And now it’s time for you to leave,” Seabs says. “Bye, Sharpy.”

“Aw, don’t be like that,” Sharpy says. “I just want to know what’s going on with Toes and Peekaboo.”

“What—” Jonny startles a bit. “What makes you think this has anything to do with Patrick?”

Sharpy rolls his eyes. “Please. Like it would be anything else.”

Jonny’s stomach jumps nauseatingly. Do they all know? Have they been able to tell the way he’s been falling, the stupid sick way his eyes have been following Patrick around? Does _Patrick_ —

“All right, all right, come in, both of you, I don’t think the whole neighborhood needs to hear this,” Seabs says.

Jonny follows him into the kitchen, stomach still jerking unpleasantly. He doesn’t really want to eat, but Seabs puts a bowl of pasta in his hands, and then Jonny has to try to choke it down while Seabs and Sharpy make small talk and eat like normal people.

It feels like forever before Seabs lets his fork clink against the empty plate. “So, you had something on your mind,” he says to Jonny.

Jonny’s chest tightens up. He darts a look at Sharpy, who’s mopping up his tomato sauce, for all the world as if he isn’t riveted to every word.

He could just…not say it. He hasn’t given anything away yet. He could still walk away, and they wouldn’t be any the wiser. But his arms and legs still itch like he wants to walk out of his own skin, and there was a reason he called Seabs in the first place.

“Yeah,” he says. “Um, look. You guys have never touched me, right?”

There’s a little pause. “I thought we’d know if we had?” Seabs says cautiously.

“Yeah, you would,” Jonny says. He smoothes his hands over his jeans. He doesn’t really talk about this, ever. “It, uh, it hurts.”

“We’re aware,” Sharpy says drily. “Why do you think we call you Tazer?”

Jonny blinks at him for a second. “You—you swore to me that was just about my last name.”

Seabs chokes on a laugh—probably at Sharpy's expense—and Sharpy says quickly, “Right, moving on. Yes, we’re aware of the touch thing.”

“Right.” Jonny takes a breath. “Um, Kaner wasn’t.”

Sharpy’s eyebrows go up.

“Yeah.” Jonny clears his throat. Even in this context, it makes his skin feel hot to talk about Patrick. Like talking about him brings him to the surface, brings him almost into the room. “He…missed it, I guess? I don’t know, it’s Kaner,” he says, and Sharpy snorts. “Anyway, he didn’t get it, and—and he touched me, without realizing. Back in November.”

“Oh, fuck,” Seabs says. “Was it bad?”

“No,” Jonny says. He tenses his thighs. This is—he doesn’t know why it’s so hard to say. “No, uh, that’s the thing. It wasn’t bad. It didn’t actually…hurt him. At all.”

Now both of them raise their eyebrows.

“Reeeeally,” Sharpy says.

“It didn’t hurt him, like…” Seabs says.

“Like, we don’t know why,” Jonny says. “It didn’t really make any sense. I still hurt other people. But he didn’t feel anything, and after that…” He swallows. He wonders if there’s any way for them to understand what it was like: having someone he could touch, without fear, after all those years. The electric freedom of pressing up against someone’s skin. “I’ve never had anyone who could touch me before,” he says finally, fumbling.

Sharpy sucks in a breath. “The fucker. What did he do?”

“What? No. Not like—nothing bad,” Jonny says. “We just, you know, we would cuddle, and…” He can feel the blood hot in his cheeks, rising to the surface with his words. “Then a couple of weeks ago, he told me I could, um.” His voice drops into a mumble. “He told me I could kiss him if I wanted.”

“Oh,” Seabs says.

“Huh. I actually didn’t see that coming,” Sharpy says. “Now I feel stupid.”

Seabs leans forward. “Look, Jonny. Just because he’s offering these things, that doesn’t mean you have to take him up on them. Even if he gets mad about it. No one’s going to think any less of you if you’ve never done any of that stuff, okay?”

“No, I—” Jonny stares at him in confusion. “Why would I not want to?”

Seabs is silent for a moment. “Okay, so I called that one wrong.”

“Obviously.” Sharpy’s giving Jonny a look that’s a little too knowing. “Your problem wasn’t telling him no, was it?”

Jonny’s stomach swoops. He shakes his head, cheeks ablaze.

“Okay,” Seabs says slowly. “So you guys…well.” He clears his throat. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of, either.”

“I know.” Jonny says quickly. “I mean, I’m not.”

“So what’s the problem?” Seabs asks.

Jonny looks down. This part is hardest to say: the part where he was really and truly an idiot. “He said. When we first started—back in November. He said he was doing it to get me used to touch. And, um.”

He takes in a shaky breath. There’s more he needs to say, but he can’t quite get the words out. Finally Seabs says, like he’s waiting for the rest, “Well, that was very nice of him.”

“It was.” Fuck, no, he is _going_ to keep it together. “It was all really nice of him, but now he—I—”

There’s another short pause while Jonny blinks furiously and tries to find his words again. Then Sharpy says, in a much softer voice, “That’s not all it was to you.”

Jonny shakes his head blindly.

“That _fucker,”_ Sharpy says again. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Hey,” Seabs says. “I’m sure Kaner didn’t mean—”

“Of course he didn’t _mean,_ ” Sharpy says. “That’s why he’s such an idiot.”

“It’s not his fault,” Jonny says. “I wanted—I mean, I would never have gotten to do any of those things, if he hadn’t. I’m not mad.”

“But…you want more?” Seabs says.

“That’s not the…” Jonny shakes his head. “We had a fight. I think, um.” He doesn’t want to say it out loud, but. “I think it’s over.”

“Oh, come on.” Sharpy huffs out air. “It’s you and Kaner. No way are things just over, like that.”

Jonny thinks of three days without speaking, of Kaner in the parking lot. The cold look in his eyes when he’d told Jonny to let go of the door.

“Maybe you should talk to him about this,” Seabs asks.

“I tried,” Jonny says. “I fucking tried. He won’t talk to me.”

“So?” Sharpy says. “You’re bigger than he is. Hold him down and make him listen.”

Jonny blinks at him for a moment. “I…really don’t think that would help.”

“No,” Seabs says with a withering glare at Sharpy, “but you really should figure out a way to talk to him. I know Sharpy can be an asshat”—“Hey,” Sharpy says—“but he’s right. It’s the two of you.” Seabs shrugs. “You’re not just going to go forever without speaking.”

“I know,” Jonny says, though he’s desperately, desperately afraid they will.

“Okay.” Sharpy leans forward, over the table. “Real talk. Obviously you’re feeling something here, with the moon eyes and everything.” He waves a hand at Jonny’s face. “Personally, I don’t see how those feelings could be for Kaner, but hey, some people root for the Canucks. How much of this is because of him and how much because this is the first person who’s ever touched your dick?”

“Jesus,” Jonny says, but Seabs makes a face.

“I hate to say it,” he says, “but he has a point.”

“You say that like it’s unusual,” Sharpy says.

“You just _two seconds ago_ recommended assault,” Seabs says.

Jonny thinks about lying on a bed next to Patrick, the strong happiness of Patrick’s skin under his mouth and the way he wants to wrap all of himself around Patrick and never let go. The way every bit of Patrick seems good to him then—good and miraculous, like the universe should never have been able to produce something like him and yet somehow it did anyway.

“I don’t know,” he whispers. “How would I know?”

Seabs gives him a serious look. “Maybe you should figure that out before you talk to him.”

***

Jonny leaves pretty soon after that. Seabs walks him to the door, and when he goes to close it behind Jonny, he hesitates.

“Hey,” Seabs says quietly. “I know it’s not much good to talk about other fish in the sea or whatever. But if things don’t work out—well, you don’t know what made you able to touch Kaner. There might be other people out there for you.”

“Thanks,” Jonny says. He suspects this is supposed to make him feel better, but he sees it again: Kaner’s face, cold and turning away from him.

“I know it’s not really want you want to hear,” Seabs says. “But, you know, if it helps—”

“Think of his hair,” Sharpy shouts from Seabs’ kitchen. “Do you really want to be attached to that hair for the rest of your life?”

“I like his hair,” Jonny says.

Seabs stares at him for a moment. “Oh, kid, you got it _bad._ ”

***

Seabs is probably right, about figuring stuff out before he talks to Patrick. Jonny should give it a few days, let Patrick cool off, and then maybe he won’t get a door shut in his face.

He tries thinking about the other things Seabs and Sharpy said instead. That maybe this is just about Patrick being the only person ever to have touched him. Jonny has no points of comparison—literally none—and he remembers what he thought before, that his body was just confused. Getting his wires crossed.

So…maybe it’s just that he’s imprinted. Maybe it’s about the sex, not about sex with Patrick. He tries to imagine having sex with someone who isn’t Patrick, just as a thought experiment. Seabs was right—there could be someone else. Maybe even someone else who would want to have sex with him. They would probably make the wrong noises, but maybe Jonny could get used to that. It would be the wrong face when he looked down at them, but that’s probably just habit, too. And they would probably still taste good when he kissed them, and when he opened them up, pushed inside them, they would—

Jonny pulls away from the thought with a physical shudder. They wouldn’t be _Patrick._

Fuck this. He can’t wait a few days.

It’s a little before dinnertime when he rings the Bowmans’ bell. He knows, he _knows,_ that this is stupid. Patrick just told him a few hours ago that he didn’t want to talk; there’s not much point in Jonny trying again. But the thought of going even another hour without seeing him makes Jonny want to peel off his own fingernails, so here he is at the Bowmans’ doorstep, jittery and trying not to puke in the flowerbeds.

Stan opens the door. He looks tired, and it makes Jonny realize he hasn’t asked him about his health in a while. “Hey, Stan,” he says. “You doing okay?”

“Can’t complain,” Stan says with a tired grin, and Jonny thinks, here’s someone with real problems, and he— “You looking for Patrick?”

Jonny nods gratefully.

“Went for a run,” Stan says. “But he should be back soon. You can wait for him if you want.”

Jonny hasn’t been in Patrick’s room here before. They’ve always spent the night at Jonny’s. Stan takes him downstairs, and he feels a guilty thrill at being here, in Patrick’s space, even under the circumstances. It’s probably the only time he’ll get to see it.

There’s a couch near the door and a bed on the far wall. Jonny sits down on the couch to wait, feeling a little like he’s ambushing him, but—Stan told him to wait. And Jonny can’t imagine walking out of here now, no matter how much his legs bounce up and down while he tries to sit still.

It’s maybe ten minutes before Patrick walks in the door. He’s dripping from the run, face glistening, curls matted to his forehead. His mouth is open a little, still breathing hard.

Jonny wants him so much it’s a physical ache.

Patrick stops with a jerk as soon as he sees Jonny. Jonny can actually see it happening: his face closing over, his eyes going hard. It knocks a hole right through the fantasy Jonny was having of licking the sweat off his collarbone.

“Hey,” Patrick says. He turns away, grabs a towel from the bookshelf, runs it over his face. “Stan didn’t tell me you were here.”

“Sorry,” Jonny says. He grips the underside of his thighs and digs his fingers in. “I was really hoping we could talk.”

“No need.” Patrick takes the towel and rubs it over the back of his neck. “We’re cool.”

“We—” Jonny takes a moment, tries to figure out if he heard that wrong. “We are?”

“Yeah.” The towel is clenched tight in Patrick’s hands as he gets the back of his neck. “I just overreacted. It’s not a big deal.”

“Okay,” Jonny says slowly. They’re good words, words he should want to hear, but he doesn’t believe them for a minute. Not with the way Patrick is facing away from him right now. “That’s…”

“Yeah, so,” Patrick says, full of false cheer. “I’ll see you around.”

“Wait, no,” Jonny says. Sweat is breaking out on his back. “We’re not—we’re not okay.”

“We’re not?” Patrick turns around, and his smile is pasted on, small and fake. “Why, are you mad at me?”

“Of course not. I—”

“Because that’s the only way we wouldn’t be okay.” Patrick shrugs, all casual. “I’m not mad.”

“Patrick.” Jonny stands up, maybe too quickly, and Patrick backs up a step, the fake smile falling off his face. “What’s going on? What is this?”

“I told you,” Patrick says. His eyes meet Jonny’s for an instant: bold, stubborn. “We’re fine.”

Jonny has the urge to grab him, to shake this stupid fake fineness out of him. “So you’re saying if I went over there and—and kissed you—”

Patrick jerks backward, so quickly it looks like he was struck.

Jonny stares at him. His eyes are wide, and Jonny knows that look. He’s seen it before, lots of times, in people—

In people he’s touched.

“What did I do?” Jonny asks, and his voice isn’t steady. “Just tell me what I did.”

“Nothing,” Patrick says in a whisper.

“If you don’t want to,” Jonny says, “you know, anymore, I get it. It’s okay. I get why you wouldn’t want to. I mean, I know it was never—the same, for you, as it was for me, and—”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Patrick explodes. “Will you shut the fuck up about that?”

Jonny shuts up. His mouth falls open.

“I fucking know it wasn’t the same,” Patrick says. He’s breathing hard. “You’ve said it a zillion times. I know I wasn’t a choice for you, okay? You don’t have to—to rub my face in it.”

Jonny blinks at him. Plays the words over in his head. Is he saying…

“Now will you just please leave?” Patrick lets out a shaky breath and turns away again. “I know it’s been an awesome conversation, but, uh, some of us don’t want to stand around in sweaty running clothes all night, so if you don’t mind…”

“You said you were going to teach me about touch,” Jonny says in a rush.

Patrick laughs a little, a small, bitter sound. “Yeah, and that worked out so well, didn’t it?”

“No, I mean. I thought—you were just teaching me,” Jonny says. He takes a step closer. “I thought that was all it was.”

“Well, sorry to burst your bubble.” Patrick’s face is doing something weird and grimace-y. “Now please, fuck, will you just—”

He shoves at Jonny, pushing him toward the door, and Jonny catches his wrists. Patrick stops moving, surprised, and Jonny looks at him: at the wide startled blue of his eyes, at the bow of his mouth, the arch of his cheekbones. The world he wants to live in. “I thought that was all it was,” Jonny says again, “for _you._ ”

Patrick opens his mouth to respond. And then stops. Shakes his head. “You’re just saying that,” he says. His voice is small. “You just—you think that, because I’m the only one who can touch you. It’s not real.”

“Sharpy and Seabs said that, too,” Jonny says. “I—I asked them what I should do. They think I don’t really know what I feel, that I’m confused.”

“And what do you think?” Patrick asks.

His face is so close, and still so guarded. Jonny lets go of the loose grip he has on Patrick’s wrists, slides his hands to his upper arms, where his shirt is damp from the run. “I think I _was_ confused,” he says. “I think…I didn’t get what my body was telling me for a long time. When you touched me at first—I thought that was what touch felt like. I thought it felt so good because I’d never had it before. But I think—“ He swallows, and the next words come out in a whisper. “I think it was you.”

Patrick takes in a shuddering breath. He leans forward a little, into Jonny’s hold, but his eyes when he looks up are wide and distressed. “But you don’t know,” he says. “You don’t really know.”

There’s a pink blush on his cheekbones, a leftover flush from his run. Jonny leans in and presses his nose to it. He feels the faint rush of Patrick’s breath against his ear, fast, light. “If I could touch anyone in the world,” Jonny whispers. “If I had my choice of anyone I wanted. If I could look through the entire planet, I’d never find anyone as—as idiotic, or as clueless, or as stubborn, or, God, as _perfect_ —”

Patrick chokes out a laugh. “What are you saying?” he breathes into Jonny’s ear. “Fuck, Jonny, are you saying what I…”

Jonny slides his hands from Patrick’s arms to his back, presses closer, takes him in his arms. “I’m saying,” he whispers against the blood-hot skin of Patrick’s cheek. “I’m saying, I choose you.”

Patrick breathes in sharply. Jonny can feel him trembling against him. He can’t believe he missed it: the way Patrick trembles at his touch.

“Really?” Patrick asks, voice a scant wisp of air.

Jonny drags his nose over Patrick’s cheek towards his mouth, feels the light puffs of Patrick’s air as their lips hover bare millimeters from each other. “Every time,” Jonny whispers. “I’d choose you every time.”

Patrick makes a noise, and then Jonny’s kissing him, bodies pressing together and mouths open and he’s here with Patrick like he thought he might never get to be again.

He slides a hand into Patrick’s hair, holds him tight and breathes him in while he kisses him: the fresh sweat of his run, salty, familiar, Patrick. Overwhelming. It makes Jonny’s chest feel like it’s peeled open; it makes his stomach quiver. He kisses him hard, desperate, swallowing all of Patrick’s little sounds and feeding them back to him.

“Jonny,” Patrick says into his mouth. He circles his hips against Jonny’s, and Jonny gasps. Patrick’s cock is so obvious through the slippery material of his running shorts. They’re both hard; it’s been days since they’ve done this, and he has Patrick in his arms; how could Jonny not be hard? He rubs his cock against the bulge of Patrick’s and kisses him and feels his blood rise. It’s Patrick, it’s Patrick, it’s _Patrick._

It takes a few minutes for them to make it closer to the bed, and then they have to stop and make out some more, Patrick’s leg coming up to circle Jonny’s hip. He’s biting at Jonny’s mouth, and Jonny gets his hands on the meat of Patrick’s ass and his tongue against Patrick’s and it’s perfect. It’s so perfect. “Perfect,” he whispers against Patrick’s lips, and then he bites down on the bottom one and Patrick cries out and tips them onto the bed.

It’s even better like that, gravity pulling him down against Patrick so their grind gets even dirtier. “Are we going to—” Patrick starts, and then breaks off to gasp as Jonny gets his tongue on the tendons of his neck. “Are we going to come in our pants again?”

“Shut up, fucker, that was my first time ever,” Jonny says, licking down to his collarbone.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, and Jonny can hear the grin in his voice even through the panting. “And I was just so hot, that you couldn’t last—”

“You were,” Jonny says with a growl, and he bites down on Patrick’s nipple.

Patrick arches up underneath him at that, his cock grinding into Jonny’s belly and Jonny’s cock against his leg, and it feels so good that Jonny does it some more. He slides his hand up under Patrick’s shirt and gets his fingernail into the hard bud of the other nipple.

“Jonny,” Patrick moans, “Jonny, there’s—there’s lube, in the night table—”

Jonny pulls back a little but keeps his fingernail on the nipple. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Patrick arches some more and then falls back against the pillow, panting, looking wrecked. “Want you inside of me.”

Jonny flashes hot and grinds down against Patrick’s leg once more before he scrambles for the lube.

He takes his time opening up Patrick once they’re naked, more time than he’d been taking before, because he just keeps thinking _mine, mine, mine._ Then he has to stop and bite Patrick’s thighs and lick down towards his ass and twist his fingers inside until Patrick is whining.

“Sh,” Jonny says, “have to be quiet,” and Patrick whimpers like he can’t help it. Jonny’s cock throbs, so hard it’s painful, and he wants to be inside. “Do we need a—”

“What?” Patrick’s eyes are hazy. “Oh. No, why would we—”

“Oh, thank fuck,” Jonny says, because he wasn’t worried about what happened that night Patrick disappeared, except that he was, and he kisses him again, even though Patrick’s laughing at him a little. Then he keeps kissing Patrick to muffle his moans as he lines up and thrusts inside.

It’s different, fucking Patrick now that he knows, and—and it’s also so much the same. Jonny can’t believe he didn’t realize it, how Patrick felt, now that he can pick up on a dozen different things Patrick does that show just how much this is affecting him. Patrick used to grab after Jonny’s hand like this before, too, and he used to pull Jonny down to kiss him during, and—and the way he looks in Jonny’s eyes, when he’s close to coming, the way he chokes out Jonny’s name as he clenches down—

Jonny gives a hard thrust and spills inside him, and then, after they’ve cuddled into each other’s arms and Jonny’s cock has slipped out, he uses his fingers to push his come back inside.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, sleepy, shivering as Jonny fingers his distended rim. “Like that. Wanna keep you.”

And Jonny doesn’t know how he missed it, but he knows now. And he kisses him for it.

***

It’s a little awkward, figuring out what to do with a thoroughly sexed-up Jonny in a house that also contains Stan Bowman.

They end up deciding to just stay in bed until the Bowmans are asleep. Much less embarrassing that way. Plus, it creates some new opportunities.

“Don’t know how I got this lucky,” Jonny murmurs a couple of rounds later. He’s completely exhausted and doesn’t think he’s ever been happier in his life.

“You,” Patrick says sleepily. “Please. I’m the one who gets to touch you.”

Jonny huffs a laugh. He’s never thought of it that way. “I don’t think many people would call that lucky.”

“I, um, wanted you before, you know,” Patrick says, and Jonny’s mouth falls open. “When I thought you just didn’t like touch.” He stretches against Jonny’s side, like it isn’t a big deal, like he hasn’t just turned Jonny’s world upside down.

“You.” Jonny grips at Patrick’s shoulder blade, like it’ll help things make sense. “You. Really? You did?”

“You’ve seen yourself play hockey, right?” Patrick says.

Jonny gapes for a moment, and then he laughs again. “I _knew_ you were impressed with me at prospect camp. I knew it.”

Patrick makes a face. “Okay, I changed my mind. You’re definitely the lucky one.”

Jonny pokes him in the side for that, and Patrick bites at his collarbone and nuzzles into the hollow of his throat. It feels amazing. Jonny never wants him to stop.

“Are you saying,” Patrick asks against Jonny’s skin, “that you didn’t have a thing for me?”

It sounds like a teasing question, but Jonny can hear the seriousness beneath it. He’s quiet for a moment. “I didn’t really have things for people,” he says finally. “I mean—I didn’t let myself want people. Not ever. It was—you know. Not letting myself get hurt.”

“I get that,” Patrick murmurs.

Jonny runs a hand up his back and into his hair. “But I was pretty obsessed with you,” he whispers, and Patrick laughs into his collarbone.

“I can tell people now, right?” he asks. “How my awesomeness overcame your weird touch thingy?”

“You could always have told people,” Jonny says, though he gets why Patrick didn’t. It was their own thing: private and tentative and unspoken between the two of them. Now, though. He has Patrick in his arms now, and he’s not going anywhere. “As long as there isn’t a speech,” Jonny adds. “I hate speeches.”

“I can work with that,” Patrick says sleepily.

***

It’s two weeks later when Patrick pulls Jonny into the locker room after practice, pushes him against a stall, takes off his helmet, and kisses him.

It’s not an R-rated kiss, but it’s long, and it’s enough to leave Jonny a little wobbly. By the time they stop, the entire locker room is silent and staring at them.

“So, there’s something we’ve missed,” Duncs says into the silence.

“Sharpy will fill you in,” Patrick says. He takes Jonny’s hand. “Come on, don’t you have a private shower somewhere around here?”

“Oh my _God,_ ” Jonny says, and everyone makes disgusted noises, and Patrick laughs.

“What?” he says as he goes out the door. “You said you didn’t want a speech.”

Jonny rolls his eyes, but he follows behind him. He always will.


End file.
